Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE

Volunteer Reserve Pilots

Mr. Hale: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how many fully-trained pilot members of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve have received notification during the last 12 months, to the most recent convenient date, terminating their continuative training and terminating the conditions under which, on keeping their training, they qualify for allowances and bounty.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward): As the hon. Member knows, we are concentrating our resources on giving refresher training to those pilots who would be of use to us in the very early days of a war. Between 1st June, 1953, and 30th September, 1954, about 1,500 pilots were told that we would not be able to give them any more flying training. Apart from National Service reservists, all those who were in the Reserve on 31st May, 1953, will be entitled to draw bounty for the remainder of their engagement even if they do not carry out flying training.

Mr. Hale: Does that mean that the 1,500 people do not draw their training allowances which they were promised when they trained for this very difficult job, and that the policy of the Government now is that a pilot of 24 years of age is a completely wasted asset who is to be written off after the expenditure of several thousand pounds on his training?

Mr. Ward: No, Sir. It does not mean that at all. It means that we can now give refresher training only to those air

crew reservists who are qualified operationally and who have not been away from operational flying for too long. We may not have sufficient time on the outbreak of a war to refresh those who have got too rusty. As regards the drawing of bounties, those who had an engagement in the R.A.F.V.R. before 1st June, 1953, apart from ex-National Service men, will go on receiving their bounties until the end of their current term of service even though they do not undergo flying training.

Greenham Common Airfield, Newbury

Mr. Hurd: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air if he will make a statement on the cost of constructing the airfield at Greenham Common, Newbury, begun in the summer of 1951, to meet the requirements of the United States Air Force; in what proportion the cost is being shared; if he has had a further geological survey made; and if he is satisfied that this will ultimately prove to be a serviceable airfield for heavy bombers.

Mr. Ward: The total cost is expected to be about —7½ million. This is being shared in approximately equal proportions between the Air Ministry and the United States Air Force. Further soil surveys and load bearing tests were carried out this year when it was decided that the runway must be strengthened to take heavier aircraft. I have no doubt that the airfield will prove entirely satisfactory for the use the United States Air Force have in mind for it.

Mr. Hurd: Does not my hon. Friend agree that a very large sum of public money is involved? As I think my hon. Friend must be aware, the advice on which his predecessor acted in 1951 has proved to be unsound, because the underground springs still persist in breaking up the runway. Can my hon. Friend give a definite assurance that he has taken further fresh and independent geological advice and that the work which is now being done is likely to result in getting a series of runways strong enough to carry these heavy bombers?

Mr. Ward: Yes, Sir. In 1951, before the airfield was rebuilt, a very comprehensive soil survey was undertaken. It is true that the runway has been damaged, but that is because it was used


by aircraft heavier than those which it was designed to take. Since then we have carried out further tests, and the damage should not recur after the runway has been strengthened.

Ex-Enemy Alien (Enlistment)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air if he has studied the details sent to him by the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North, concerning an enemy alien taken prisoner by British forces during the war, who later escaped and joined the Royal Air Force under an assumed name; and what precautions are now taken against a recurrence of this incident and the consequent possibility of espionage.

Mr. Ward: The implications of this case were very carefully examined in 1951. Since that date, security checks have been introduced which should help to prevent this sort of thing happening again. It would be wrong for me to say publicly what these precautions are.

Mr. Hughes: Can the hon. Gentleman say how many ex-enemy aliens joined the Royal Air Force under misrepresentations such as those set out in the book, "The Other Side"? Does this not involve a terrible risk to the safety of Britain and, indeed, to the lives of other members of the R.A.F.?

Mr. Ward: As far as I know, there have been no cases of enemy aliens obtaining entry into the R.A.F. by false declaration, although I should like to have notice of that question. In any case, the man who is the subject of this Question was in the Royal Air Force between 1948 and 1950. Our security arrangements have been tightened up since then, and descriptions of what is said to have happened five years ago are not necessarily true of the R.A.F. today.

Mr. Hale: As it is Government policy that what my hon. and learned Friend calls "ex-enemy aliens" should serve in bulk in N.A.T.O., what is the objection to their serving in the Royal Air Force?

Mr. Hughes: Is the Minister aware that my objection and my Question are directed to ex-enemy aliens joining the Royal Air Force under misrepresentations such as those set out in the book, "The Other Side," which I have already mentioned?

National Service

Mr. Chapman: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how far it has been the practice in recent months for men registering for National Service in Birmingham to be told that they can serve in the Royal Air Force only if they sign on for three years, and then only in a clerical job; how many National Service men in Birmingham have agreed to do so in order to train in the Royal Air Force; and whether he will give an assurance that this is not being used as a means to recruit men for the Regular Forces.

Mr. Ward: The practice in Birmingham is the same as in any other part of Great Britain. There is a limited number of vacancies for National Service men in the Royal Air Force and keen competition for them. No man is obliged to take a Regular engagement, but suitable men for whom National Service vacancies cannot be found are offered Regular engagements, not necessarily in clerical trades, and they often prefer to accept such engagements as an alternative to doing National Service in one of the other Services. In Birmingham in the last three months, 125 men were rejected for National Service vacancies, but were accepted for three-year Regular engagements.

Mr. Chapman: Can the Minister say what, in fact, is the proportion of National Service men who get into the Royal Air Force? Would it not be a good idea, in order that the public should not think that registration is being used as a racket to get Regulars, that at the point of registration men should not be pressed in this way to take long service engagements? Does not this make it seem to the general public like a racket to get Regular airmen?

Mr. Ward: In answer to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, there are at present in the Royal Air Force about 160,000 Regulars and about 65,000 National Service men. That will give him some idea of the proportion. As regards the second part of his supplementary question, we have made it quite clear to all concerned that pressure is not to be put on these young men to take on Regular engagements. However, it is fair to point out to them that if they


care to come in on a three-, four- or five-year engagement, they will enjoy certain definite advantages. A wider choice of trades will then be open to them, and they will be able to serve in the Royal Air Force instead of in the Army.

Mr. J. Harrison: Can the Minister say why there is this strong preference for the Royal Air Force compared with the preference for the other two Services?

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: It is the best Service.

Mr. Ward: I can only imagine that it is for the same reason that I myself joined the Royal Air Force.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what reduction in, or exemption from, service is granted to National Service men in respect of previous service with a Commonwealth air force.

Mr. Ward: Service in a Commonwealth air force does not exempt a man from being called up under the National Service Acts. The length of time he serves is, however, normally reduced by the length of time he has been in the Commonwealth air force.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that his answer will give some satisfaction to a constituent of mine who served in the Royal Australian Air Force and who is now back in Brixton?

Scampton Aerodrome, Lincolnshire (Runway)

Mr. E.L. Mallalieu: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air to give an estimate of the extra expense involved in using a north-south runway at Scampton Aerodrome, Lincolnshire, instead of obliterating a portion of Ermine Street to make a north-east—south-west runway.

Mr. Ward: About £50,000; but the north-south runway cannot be extended for reasons other than cost.

Mr. Mallalieu: Can the hon. Gentleman Assure the House that it is not owing to tenderness for the married quarters at Scampton Aerodrome that he is consenting to this vandalism with regard to Ermine Street?

Mr. Ward: I can give that assurance absolutely. As regards extending the north-south runway, there are very many other reasons, apart from the married quarters, why we cannot extend it. It is 40 degrees out of the prevailing wind, and aircraft would have to land and take off over Lincoln, and, quite apart from the unpleasant effects of this on the people on the ground, the Cathedral Tower would form a hazard to aircraft.

Captain Pilkington: Cannot my hon. Friend reconsider this matter, because these ancient roads will be of interest to future generations? Surely the Department could refrain from spoiling a portion of one of them?

Mr. Ward: We have looked into this matter extremely carefully. I, personally, have received representatives of the county and of the city and have been right through the matter with them. I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that if we could have avoided cutting through Ermine Street we would certainly have done so. I very much regret the necessity of having to do so.

Pilots and Aircrew

Mr. de Freitas: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air the average cost of training pilots and other aircrew, respectively, to operational standard.

Mr. Ward: In round figures, the cost, up to the time of joining a squadron, can be taken as: pilots and navigators, £25,000; air signallers, £15,000; and flight engineers and air gunners, £8,000.

Mr. de Freitas: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what factors are used, in relation to the numbers of aircraft, for calculating future requirements of pilots and other aircrew.

Mr. Ward: Our calculations are based on an assessment, for each aircraft type and rôle, of the aircrew needed to meet our estimated requirements in the event of war. They take into account the immediate reinforcement of the front line in war by aircrew with recent operational experience who are for the time being employed on other duties, or who have recently been transferred to the Reserve. I am afraid that, as I told the hon. Member on 14th July, it would not be in the public interest to give details.

Mr. de Freitas: Is not the present factor too high, and does it not lead to a great waste of money in the production of pilots and other aircrew beyond what we can possibly expect to employ in another war?

Mr. Ward: The hon. Gentleman knows very well from his own experience the complication of this matter. It is not easy. However, I can assure him that the figures on which we are working are the result of an extremely thorough review which we carried out in the last few months, and represent the most accurate and objective assessment at which we can arrive.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAYS

Freight Charges, Scotland

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation to state the results of his conversations with the Secretary of State for Scotland and the chairman of the Scottish Tourist Board, designed to bring into operation a scheme for the equalisation of railway freight charges in and to Scotland, and also designed to eliminate the hardships caused by the present anomalies in freight charges; and what steps he proposes to take in these matters.

The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): The hon. and learned Member is misinformed. There have been no such conversations.

Mr. Hughes: As the Minister is new to this job, has he not had some conversations with his predecessor about this matter? Is he not aware that the expense of transport in the North of Scotland is holding up vast industrial planning there, and will he look into the matter and do something about it?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: This is, of course, an important matter, but there have been no conversations on this subject, nor could there usefully be any. The hon. and learned Member may be aware that, first of all, it is a matter for the Transport Commission to prepare a scheme and then to submit it to the tribunal, where Scottish interests can, and no doubt will, express their views.

Mr. John MacLeod: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the present time limit fixed by him under Section 76 of the Transport Act, 1947, for the submission of a railway charges scheme by the British Transport Commission to the Transport Tribunal.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The period at present allowed expires on 6th August, 1955. I understand, however, that the Commission has practically completed the draft of a Rail Merchandise Charges Scheme and is about to consult with interests concerned, including of course Scottish interests. It will be submitted to the Tribunal as soon as these consultations have taken place.

Mr. MacLeod: Will my right hon. Friend treat this matter with the utmost urgency? He will appreciate that people living in remote areas such as the Highlands and elsewhere hope that some system of relief from the penal burden of freight charges will be worked out. Surely it would be better to attract as much business on to the railways as possible in order to relieve the congestion on the roads?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Under the existing legislation the matter is not in my hands, but I understand the concern of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members about this matter. I have no doubt that the Transport Commission will press forward with its proposals.

Mr. Ernest Davies: Will the right hon. Gentleman inform his hon. Friend that if his Government had not interfered with the Transport Commission a transport charges scheme would have been submitted several years ago?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I think that complicated and dubiously accurate statement had better be conveyed direct.

Mr. Davies: It is perfectly accurate.

Brigadier Peto: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this question of charges is particularly applicable to North Devon so far as coal is concerned?

Inverkeithing-Forth Bridge Incline

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what assurances he has received that steps will be taken to provide greater safety,


for railway passengers in view of the recent report by Brigadier C. A. Langley. Inspecting Officer of Railways, on the accident to the night Aberdeen-to-London express on 7th March, 1954.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am assured that any train, whether passenger or freight, which may exceed the normal load of a single engine will now be assisted by another engine on the incline from Inverkeithing to the Forth Bridge. I would also refer the hon. and learned Member to the reply which I gave to him on 27th October.

Mr. Hughes: Are those the only steps that are being taken to ensure the safety of passengers in this place, where accidents have occurred on more than one occasion? Will the right hon. Gentleman look into the matter and see that passengers are properly protected?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have looked into the matter very carefully. If the hon. and learned Member will study, not only this answer but the previous one, he will see that the main points made by the inspector of accidents have been met.

Mr. J. Harrison: Will not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the rail passenger services are the safest forms of transport in this country or in any other?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: They are pretty good.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT

Headlights (Dazzle)

Mr. Shepherd: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation when he proposes to take action in connection with the dazzle problem; and whether he will, as an interim measure, adopt the yellow light.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Effective action to check dazzle largely depends on standardisation of lighting power and correctness of aim of the headlight. Much preliminary work has been done, but it is not possible to make new regulations until facilities for enforcement and testing can be provided, and time would in any event be required while opportunity was given for the fitting of cars with lights of the prescribed pattern. Work at the same time is proceeding in an attempt to

secure international agreement. So far as the second part of the Question is concerned, the weight of scientific evidence is against my hon. Friend's view that yellow lights reduce dazzle.

Mr. Shepherd: Is not my right hon. Friend aware that his answer will further depress those of us who are anxious to see some action on this question, and whatever may be the official view of the backroom boys of the Ministry of Transport, those who, like myself, have been driving for 25 years think that the yellow light is of some advantage?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I think that the reason the hon. Gentleman sees an advantage in the yellow light is that he has seen it in France, where the light is not only yellow, but of a lower power.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: Will the right hon. Gentleman at the same time consider the distracting effect of these blinking, twinkling trafficators which so much embarrass motorists?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Yes, Sir.

Mr. G. Wilson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Road Research Laboratory has advised against the yellow light?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I understand that is so.

Mr. Chapman: Why not just prohibit undimmed headlights? Those who drive know that an undimmed headlight is very little better than a dimmed headlight. Why not prohibit it for the sake of safety?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The problem really turns not on whether the headlight is dimmed or undimmed, but on the angle of its setting. A very little alteration in angle—something less than three degrees—can make all the difference between a safe light and dazzle.

Mr. D. Jones: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what results were secured from the international tests which were held in the United States of America earlier this year, which his technical advisers attended; and what action he proposes to take, arising from these tests, in making headlamp dipping universal.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The results of these tests are at present being analysed by an international working party of technical experts. Until I know the result of this analysis and receive a copy of the report, I cannot possibly say what action it will be right for me to take.

Mr. Jones: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the attention of his predecessor was called to this matter in the early months of 1952 by a trade union which caters for a large number of public vehicle drivers, and that there is real apprehension among bus drivers about the danger of driving after dark because of different methods? Is he aware that his predecessor told me more than 12 months ago that something was being done, and does not he think it is time that he got a move on?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am as anxious to get on as the hon. Gentleman, but he may be aware that there are certain difficulties about hustling an international working party.

Children (Reduced Fares)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will introduce legislation fixing the maximum fares to be charged on passenger transport services to children up to the age of 16 years, receiving full-time education, at half the rate for adults.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir.

Mr. Warbey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a large number of transport undertakings in my constituency and elsewhere have not brought their fares policy into line with the raising of the school-leaving age? Since one Government Department has determined that parents must send their children to school up to the age of 15 years, and in some cases 16 years, could not the other Department determine that they should have the benefit of reduced fares?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Under existing legislation, concessions are for the operators to make. At the next stage comes the approval of the licensing authority, and I only come in on appeal if there is disagreement. I do not think that this is a matter for new legislation.

Mr. Ernest Davies: Need the Minister be quite so modest? If he indicates to

the licensing authorities that it is the opinion of the House that fares for children under 15 years should be half fares, would not the licensing authorities act accordingly? Cannot the Minister look into the matter? It is rather serious.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The Question relates to children up to the age of 16 years and rather different problems arise.

Mr. John MacLeod: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this is a great hardship to people who have families and want their children to return for holidays to remote areas such as the North of Scotland?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: It would clearly be of advantage to many people concerned to pay reduced fares in respect of older children, but I am not sure that it is the right thing to put this liability on transport operators, public or private.

Sir R. Acland: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will publish a list showing which major road transport undertakings grant, and which do not grant, reduced fare rates to children up to 15 years of age when travelling to and from school.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The information is not readily available and will take some time to collect, but I will write to the hon. Baronet when I have done so.

Transport Commission Staff (Civic Duties)

Mr. G. Williams: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will consider introducing legislation to allow chairmen of urban district councils who are employed by the British Transport Commission the same facilities that are granted to lord mayors and mayors in order that they may carry out their civic duties without loss of income.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. I do not think this an appropriate subject for legislation.

Mr. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Chairman of the Tonbridge Urban District Council is an engine driver and has important duties towards 20,000 citizens and other functions to perform, including entertaining Royalty from time to time? Is he aware that to fulfil these engagements the chairman has to be out


of pocket, otherwise he must refuse to perform these duties? Is it right that Tonbridge should be unfairly treated because it has no mayor?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend's point of view, but it seems to me that it is essentially a matter for the Commission as employers to settle in discussions with their employees.

Road Haulage Assets (Sale)

Mr. Jay: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will take steps to amend the Transport Act, 1953, so as to preclude the sale of premises and lorries owned by British Road Services where it is impossible to offer alternative work in that undertaking to those displaced.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, suitable provision for compensation for loss of employment is made by Regulations made under the Transport Act, 1953.

Mr. Jay: Is the Minister aware that in my constituency there is a case, of which I have sent him particulars, in which an efficient enterprise has been broken up and the staff discharged without any assurance of alternative employment? What is the point of such an operation?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The right hon. Gentleman was good enough to draw attention to a particular case, in respect of which I am glad to inform him that most of the men have been offered suitable employment. The right hon. Gentleman will recall that the arrangements made for compensation to employees on denationalisation were conspicuously more generous than those made on nationalisation.

Mr. Jay: What is the advantage of having such an operation at all?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to our debates on the Transport Act, 1953.

Mr. Jay: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether, in view of the capital loss of £20 million sustained by the British Transport Commission from the sale of road vehicles, he will take steps to amend the Transport Act, 1953, so as to terminate the sale of

road vehicles and other publicly-owned property.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir.

Mr. Jay: As the Minister has admitted the loss of £20 million of public money, the breaking up of an efficient industry and depriving a number of workpeople of their jobs, does he not think he has done enough?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well—if he does not know, he can inform himself from the Third Schedule of the 1953 Act —that this is not a question, in the crude sense in which he used it, of a loss of public money. It is in settlement of the charges which arose from the process of denationalisation reimbursed by the Commission.

Mr. Woodburn: Would the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether he has given his consent, as some people are boasting, to the private sale of the South-West of Scotland Road Transport to a private concern at a throw-away price?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That, of course, is a different question. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will be good enough to put it down.

Mr. Renton: Will my right hon. Friend consider issuing a simple public statement which will counteract the inaccurate and unfair effect of the propaganda of the party opposite?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I think the crude suggestion made in certain quarters of a loss of this sort will probably discredit itself, but I will bear the suggestion in mind.

Mr. Ernest Davies: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation when it is proposed to introduce legislation to terminate sales of road vehicles owned by the British Transport Commission.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The only such proposals of which I have heard are those of the hon. Gentleman and his friends. The time of their introduction is, therefore, so remote as to amount to the merest speculation.

Mr. Davies: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that proposals which are made from this side of the House are eminently desirable? Does he not realise


that no section of public opinion, whether trade, industry or agriculture, is in favour of continuing with the disposal of road haulage vehicles at the present time?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: On the second part of the question, I have seen very little evidence to support the hon. Gentleman's point of view. On the first part of the question, I should be a little doubtful about a horse from that stable.

Mr. H. Morrison: The right hon. Gentleman has limited experience of being a full Minister. Does he not think that it is best to answer the Question on the Paper rather than merely be gratuitously impudent?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If the right hon. Gentleman, whose courtesy I will seek to emulate, had studied the Question before that intervention, he would have seen that I was asked by his hon. Friend
when it is proposed to introduce legislation
of that nature. My answer was that the only proposals came from the right hon. Gentleman's own party and that for that reason the prospect appeared to be remote. That seems to me to be an answer which has the merit of being both relevant and true.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Davies: What are the Minister's intentions? Is he continuing with the sale indefinitely or is he bringing them to an end? The House would like to know what is his policy.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am carrying out the duties laid upon me by Parliament to dispose of these vehicles.

Mr. Popplewell: Will not the Minister look again at this matter? He must know that business and commercial interests all over the country are deploring the continuation of these sales. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] Oh, yes; chambers of trade, chambers of commerce, all of them are saying it. Will not the Minister look into the question to see what he can do to ensure that an efficient service is given?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am as concerned as the hon. Member that there should be as efficient a service as possible, but he must accept it from me that a great volume of opinion in the country—[HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."]—regards a system of private enterprise as giving the greatest efficiency.

Mr. Morrison: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that his first duty to the House is to answer Questions on the Order Paper and not to subordinate the answering of Questions merely to winning the cheap cheers of his supporters? Is it now the settled policy of the Government, who are responsible to the House as a whole, that any proposal coming from the Opposition is bound to be wrong? Have we reached a stage of dictatorship when the Government are not prepared to listen to any proposal merely because it comes from the Opposition?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The answer under this Government is undoubtedly "No, Sir," but I ask the right hon. Gentleman to search his conscience as to whether that applied in 1945.

Mr. Ernest Davies: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the total administrative costs incurred to date by the Road Haulage Disposal Board in disposing of the road haulage organisation of the British Transport Commission.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: All the expenses of the Board are administrative costs. Twenty-seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-four pounds is the total of its expenses to 5th November, 1954.

Mr. Davies: Is this not money which is being poured down the drain? Is it not ridiculous to spend this amount to make the loss of £20 million which is being made on the disposal of road haulage vehicles, and can we not call it a day?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Member knows perfectly well that that is not an accurate or fair way of expressing the position. This is a moderate sum economically expended to carry out the wishes of Parliament.

Mr. Davies: Does the Minister consider a £20 million loss a moderate sum?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The question which the hon. Member put down, and which, therefore, I assume he had in mind, is one to which the answer was £27,000.

Old People (Concession Fares)

Mr. Janner: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether his attention has been drawn to the case of Prescott versus Birmingham Corporation;


and if he will introduce legislation enabling local authorities to permit old-age pensioners, and other needy sections of the community, to travel free or at reduced prices on corporation transport vehicles.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave to the hon. Member for Erdington (Mr. J. Silverman) on 27th October.

Mr. Janner: Irrespective of what the decision may be in the Court of Appeal, will the Minister say whether he is in sympathy with the idea of allowing old-age pensioners to travel free, and also whether, if Leicester—as I believe is proposed—promotes a Bill containing a provision to that effect, he will give his whole-hearted support to it?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The last part of the supplementary question was, I think, on three points hypothetical. In reply to the first part, I think that until the matter is settled in the courts the less I say about it the better.

Bus Services, Rural Areas

Mr. Smithers: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he is aware of the difficulty of obtaining omnibus services in rural areas generally; and what is his policy for improving the situation in this respect.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: While I agree that there are difficulties in some areas, this is not general. I have, of course, no power to compel anyone to run an un-remunerative bus service. But the licensing authorities are doing their best to see that as many as possible such services are run by operators of other routes.

Mr. Smithers: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the rural areas of Hampshire the difficulties are considerable, and that people will not go to live and work in the countryside under present conditions unless they have a bus service? Will he make a study of what can be done to alter the conditions so as to make it remunerative to run local village bus services?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: There are particular difficulties in Hampshire, to which my hon. Friend has drawn my attention, but as I pointed out in my answer, I have

no powers to compel anyone to operate such a service. To secure a certain degree of co-operation from the licensing authority is the best way of tackling this matter.

Mr. D. Jones: Does the right hon. Gentleman now realise that if the area schemes had been left in the Transport Act of 1947, in many cases urbanised services could be used to subsidise rural services?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I understood that even right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite had now realised that the area schemes would not work.

Mr. Smithers: Is my right hon. Friend aware—I am sure that he is—that it has nothing to do with area schemes? Is he aware that if the surrounding economic circumstances were examined it would be found that there are several steps which might be taken to help to improve this matter in rural areas? Is he aware that I shall take the opportunity of raising it more fully on a suitable occasion?

Lost Property (Rewards)

Mr. Grimond: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will introduce legislation to ensure that members of the public finding lost property on public transport are rewarded.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: There is no need for legislation, but I am looking into that aspect of the regulations which relates to property found by members of the public.

Mr. Grimond: Will the Minister bear in mind that it would greatly improve public relations if some reward were given to members of the public who find property on public vehicles and return it in accordance with their obligations?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am looking into the case which, I think, the hon. Member has in mind, but I would rather not commit myself at present.

Mr. Follick: Is it not a general rule that Scotland Yard returns one-third of the value of property that is found?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That is another question and one which I do not think should be put to me.

Toll Trunk Roads

Mr. Grimond: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what estimate he has made as to the charges which would be necessary on toll trunk routes to cover construction and maintenance costs, respectively.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No general estimate is possible, as such charge would depend on the particular road.

Mr. Grimond: I appreciate that the figures vary a great deal according to particular roads, but as the Minister is rumoured to have an open mind on the subject, will he see whether details cannot be got out for different types of road so that we may judge whether suggestions for improving roads are reasonable?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I will look at the matter, but so many arbitrary assumptions would have to be made—for example, questions of cost, the number of points of entry, and so on—that I am doubtful whether the details would be of much use. I will, however, look into the question.

Mr. K. Thompson: Will my right hon. Friend take note of the abhorrence of all road users of a system of tolls? Does he not consider that road users already pay sufficient in taxation and, as taxpayers, ought to have the right to use the roads for which they pay to be constructed?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROADS

Dartford-Purfleet Tunnel

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation on what date in 1955 work will recommence on the construction of the Dartford-Purfleet Tunnel.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I regret that I cannot add to the answer given to the hon. Member on 19th May.

Mr. Dodds: But does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that 15th May last is a long way away and 1955 is pretty close and that his answer is intensely disappointing to local authorities and industrialists who expected that with a new Minister something would be done?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The answer to which I draw the attention of the hon. Member referred, as he knows, to action next year, and next year has not yet arrived.

Scotland Road, Liverpool

Mr. Logan: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he is aware of the danger to life to children and old people on the Scotland Road, Liverpool; and if he will now make provision for two subways between Caznean Street and Rotunda.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am aware of traffic conditions on this road. The initiative for the provision of subways lies with the local highway authority, but my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has already explained to the hon. Member other methods of dealing with this problem.

Mr. Logan: Is the Minister aware that 4,000 children, apart from the adult population, cross that road every week? Is he aware that it is a congested road, that we are very much afraid for child life and want to see something done?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I share the hon. Member's anxiety about this road, and I agree that there is very heavy pedestrian traffic upon it. The point at issue, however, is whether the best thing to do is to provide tunnels, which, as the hon. Member knows, are not fully used, or whether in the near future the alternative which has been explained to him would not be really more effective.

Mr. Page: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this anxiety is shared by those who live in neighbouring constituencies Who use this road in getting in and out of Liverpool? Will he consider, instead of tunnels, the installation of press-button traffic signals?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That has been considered, but I am rather doubtful whether that is the answer in this case.

Pedestrian Crossings

Mr. Keenan: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what plans he has decided upon to ensure that pedestrians can safely cross the roads, following the reduction of road crossings for pedestrians in our cities and towns.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The whole purpose of the reduction in the number of pedestrian crossings in 1951 was, as explained by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Ham, South (Mr. Barnes) at the time, to make it safer for pedestrians to cross the roads by securing that crossings were both properly used by pedestrians and respected by drivers.

Mr. Keenan: Has the Minister realised that the recent action of his Department in curtailing the number of zebra crossings in cities and towns has meant that there are few places where pedestrians can cross the roads? In most cities the crossings are hundreds of yards apart? Where traffic is heavy, what means have pedestrians of crossing the road?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I think the hon. Member has misunderstood. The reduction in the number of crossings took place three years ago. My Department has not been responsible for reductions recently. From correspondence, I gather the hon. Member has in mind that certain crossings which are police controlled have had their stripes removed—[Laughter.]—that has a familiar ring for certain hon. Members—so as to make it clear that they are controlled.

Mr. Keenan: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has got the idea. Is he aware that in Liverpool there are 131 such crossings? Where else can the people of Liverpool cross the roads in safety, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for the Scotland Division (Mr. Logan)?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As I have pointed out, the main reduction in the numbers was made—I think for very good reasons—by my predecessor some three years ago. If the hon. Member knows of some particular sites which he and the Liverpool City Council think should be considered for crossings, I will look into the matter.

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: Will my right hon. Friend ensure that more light shines down on pedestrians at zebra crossings, as it is very difficult sometimes to see whether pedestrians are waiting to cross the road when the crossing is very dimly lit?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Lighting provision at these crossings is generally the

responsibility of local authorities. I hope they will take note of the useful suggestion of my hon. Friend.

Road Safety (Signalling Device)

Mr. Chapman: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether, in the interests of road safety, he will review his policy of refusing to commend and promote road safety inventions; and why no representative of his Department has inspected the signalling device of Mr. Chater, of Clevedon, details of which have on more than one occasion been forwarded by Mr. Irish, of 1329, Bristol Road South, Northfield, Birmingham.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I do not accept the imputation contained in the first part of this Question. No representative of my Department has inspected this particular device because the details already submitted make its nature and purpose sufficiently clear. Among other things, it would not, if used, comply with the law.

Mr. Chapman: Is it not a case that in many letters to me and to other hon. Members the Department has said that it is not its policy to commend particular inventions? If Government Departments had to do so in time of war for war-time inventions, is not the campaign against death and destruction on the road sufficiently important for the policy to be reconsidered by the Department?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I made it clear, I hope, in the earlier part of the answer, that I do not accept the suggestion of lack of interest in suitable devices of this sort as our policy, but there is a distinction between that and getting involved in commercial interests.

Mr. Chapman: Whom can an inventor get to take up these things? There is not one commercial organisation.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: This particular device was submitted to my Department and we did not proceed further with it because, although its purpose was clear, it did not comply with the law.

Tamar Crossing (Report)

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation to give an estimate of the cost of printing the report


of the technical panel concerning the Tamar Crossing.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: £1,250.

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he is aware that people in mid and west Cornwall, interested in the report of the technical panel concerning the Tamar Crossing, have to go to Plymouth to see it; and whether he will send a copy to the clerk to the Cornwall Council Council for inspection at County Hall, Truro.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. I sent a copy to the Cornwall County Council on 28th October.

Mr. Hayman: While thanking the Minister for his belated concession—which happened to take place on the day when my Question appeared on the Order Paper—may I remind him that my important constituency of Falmouth and Camborne is 60 miles away from Plymouth and that Cornishmen do not regard Cornwall as an appendage of Plymouth and expect the right hon. Gentleman to remember that?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I need no reminding of that. In reply to the first part of the supplementary question, perhaps it was a case of great minds thinking alike.

Improvement Schemes

Mr. H. Nicholls: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will reconsider the scope of the proposed road improvement schemes for the next three years, in view of the anticipated increase in production of motor vehicles and the existing over-burdened and dangerous state of our roads.

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether the Government will consider extending the road programme to ensure safer and more efficient communications.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I would refer my hon. Friends to the answer I gave on the 3rd November to my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke).

Mr. Nicholls: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the answer he gave last week did not face up to the problem? Is he further aware that every day brings

irrefutable evidence that the problem of the roads is becoming more and more urgent? Is he also aware that feeling in the country is being kept in reserve, because of rumours that the Government are thinking of doing something about improving the roads, and that if those rumours are unfounded, there will be a great and warranted outcry against the Government for not facing up to this matter?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I take note of the most eloquent supplementary question from my hon. Friend, but none the less I have no statement to make at the moment.

Mr. Ernest Davies: Can the Minister inform us if there is any truth in these rumours, and, if so, how they managed to get into the Press without this House being informed?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If the hon. Gentleman can draft that question, perhaps he will put it on the Order Paper.

Mr. Williams: Will my right hon. Friend confirm or deny that he has maintained a completely inflexible attitude to this matter of financing road development? Will he not use what, I suppose, must be a residual influence at the Treasury to try to get extra funds for roads in future years?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: There is a certain element of speculation in that suplementary question with which it is difficult to deal precisely.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Will the Minister study the experience of foreign nations in reducing road accidents by road engineering?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Nicholson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the scheme for which there should be overwhelming priority is the Farnham by-pass.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I note the view of my hon. Friend, which he has expressed not for the first time, but I do not think that it will receive the unanimous approval of this House.

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will make a statement on the further development of the road programme in the North-East.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have nothing to add at present to the reply given to my hon. Friend on 30th June last.

Mr. Williams: Can my right hon. Friend make any forecast about next year or even the year after?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Not this afternoon.

Toll Bridge, Selby

Mr. Odey: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he is now in a position to make a statement regarding the abolition of the toll on Selby Bridge.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. I cannot yet forecast when funds will be available for this purpose.

Mr. Odey: Is my right hon. Friend aware that until this toll is abolished and a new bridge built, nobody—not even my right hon. Friend—can regard the transport conditions in the East Riding of Yorkshire as being efficient?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am not disposed to quarrel with that, but my hon. Friend will be aware that I have to set the claims of this proposition against that of a good many others, including others in the East Riding.

Forth and Tay Bridges

Sir W. Darling: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, in view of the restrictions now being removed from building materials and labour, a date can be given for the commencement of the erection of road bridges over the River Forth and the River Tay estuaries.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. The welcome removal of restrictions to which my hon. Friend refers, does not relieve us of the need to allocate the limited funds available to the most urgent projects which can be afforded.

Sir W. Darling: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the funds are available; that his predecessor refused permission to Scottish industrialists to build with their own funds, so that difficulty is now entirely removed? If I am right in supposing that there is no difficulty about building material, Scotland will build its own Forth bridge, if financial permission be extended. Will such permission be given?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The point is not so much financial permission as financial provision, but if my hon. Friend has a proposal for providing the finances for a bridge of this sort, that will certainly be looked at.

Mr. Woodburn: Has the attention of the right hon. Gentleman been called to the fact that there are bodies in Scotland proposing to raise the money to provide a bridge and charge the necessary tolls? Are we to take it from his reply that, if they do so, he will raise no objection?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I should have to see the proposals before answering that question, but I should be very happy to see them.

Mr. C. Williams: Will my right hon. Friend remember that the Tamar bridge would be far more useful and important than the bridge which has just been mentioned?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That may be so, but this Question refers to bridges over the rivers Forth and Tay.

Flyover, Hammersmith

Mr. Janner: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what rate of grant he is prepared to make to the London County Council to construct the flyover viaduct on Cromwell Road extension south of Hammersmith Broadway.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Seventy-five per cent., Sir.

Mr. Janner: Why is there difficulty at present in regard to the construction of this highly desirable road?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That is another question. The hon. Member asked me what was the rate of grant.

Footpath, Rugeley

Mr. Snow: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation why there has been a delay in approving the application for an adequately wide footpath on that section of the Hednesford—Rugeley road lying between the newly-completed Pear Tree Estate, Rugeley, and the town centre; and if he is aware of the danger to pedestrians, in view of the planned increase in the population of the town.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No such application has been received.

Mr. Snow: As the right hon. Gentleman has a responsibility for road safety, will he make it his business to look into this case? A new estate has been completed, a vast increase in the local population has been reached, and the road is very dangerous indeed, with a large child population using it.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If an application is received from the responsible highway authority, of course I will look into it.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL AVIATION

Helicopter Stations, London (Rooftop Sites)

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what investigations have taken place in recent months into the suitability of utilising the roofs of London's railway stations as possible helicopter stations.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have recently completed an investigation into the practicability of rooftop sites for helicopters over Waterloo and Cannon Street Stations and at a site near St. Pancras. The last is unsuitable because of surrounding buildings; at the other two stations rooftop platforms could be constructed at very considerable cost, but it is doubtful if they would be large enough for helicopter traffic hoped for in the future.

Mr. Dodds: Have we made any progress, or are we still marking time?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If the hon. Member will study my answer, he will see that we have made quite considerable progress.

Mr. Snow: Hovering.

Passenger Airlines (Dinghies)

Mr. Beswick: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what representations have been received by his Department to the effect that passenger airlines should be permitted to operate further over the sea without carrying dinghies.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: None, Sir.

Mr. Beswick: Does that mean that the Department is initiating a proposal to reduce the safety standards?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As the hon. Member is aware, when international standards are laid down which are different from those in operation in this country, we look into them as a matter of general practice in order to find out who is right.

Rearward-facing seats

Mr. Beswick: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what progress he has made towards securing international agreement on the mandatory installation of rearward-facing seats in passenger aircraft.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The installation of rearward-facing seats was advocated by the United Kingdom at the 4th Session of the Airworthiness Division of the International Civil Aviation Organisation in March, 1951. No agreement has been reached. I intend to instruct our representatives to raise this matter again at the earliest opportunity.

Mr. Beswick: Is the Minister aware that not only is the Royal Air Force advocating rearward-facing seats, but that his Department's former inspector of accidents has now come out with a public statement in favour of them, which puts his Department in a rather awkward position? Will he say if he can take some additional initiative other than that already taken?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I do not think that we are in an awkward position. We have, in fact, taken the lead over this, and in that respect we have been forward-facing.

Mr. Langford-Holt: Is my right hon. Friend aware that anyone who has had experience of this matter knows that undoubtedly rearward-facing seats are infinitely safer, and that there is nothing to prevent him, or this country as a whole, from adopting them and putting the procedure into practice immediately?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: From a safety angle, there is a good deal of evidence in support of the view expressed by my hon. Friend, but I think that he will be aware that there are a number of steps which have to be taken before there can be any question of compulsion, particularly in respect of existing aircraft.

High Pressure F.I.D.O. (Experiments)

Mr. Beswick: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what is now the policy of his Department regarding the installation of F.I.D.O. at London Airport.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have nothing to add to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary's reply of 30th July, 1954, to my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Baldock).

Mr. Beswick: Is the Minister aware that as far back as 1950 his hon. Friend was saying that this system of lighting should be installed at London Airport by the winter of that year? Has he anything to add to the statements then made? Why is there this continued delay?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The answer given by my hon. Friend on 30th July pointed out that experiments would be carried out at a Service aerodrome to be selected by the Royal Air Force.

Mr. Beswick: Can the Minister say if the aerodrome has been selected, and whether experiments have started, and what is this new system regarding which experiments are being made?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In the circumstances, I think that the question is one for my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Air.

Pilots (Training Scheme)

Mr. W. J. Taylor: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation when he expects to be in a position to make a statement with regard to the adoption of a scheme for the training of civil air pilots following representations made to him by the Air League of the British Empire; and whether he is aware of the growing anxiety of operators, and particularly the two national air corporations, that a scheme of training should be inaugurated without further delay.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I know the interest of operators in this important question. It is being gone into carefully by the Departments concerned.

Mr. Taylor: Is the Minister aware that this matter has been under consideration by his Department since March of this

year? Is he further aware that the continuing delay is bound to cause increased difficulties to operators, including the nationalised corporations, and will he do something to expedite a decision on this matter?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am as anxious as my hon. Friend to get on with this, but it is a complicated matter involving several Departments of State and not susceptible to an "off the cuff" decision.

Mr. Beswick: Can the Minister say when he is likely to come to a decision about this matter?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Not today.

MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL (SAFETY PRECAUTIONS)

Mr. Proctor: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will set up a Departmental committee to consider the legislation covering the Manchester Ship Canal, and to recommend fresh legislation to assign definite responsibility for safety precautions, in particular as regards the safety of pedestrians crossing the bridges over the canal.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir.

Mr. Proctor: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these precautions, whilst suitable when the canal was constructed, are quite unsuitable for modern traffic conditions? Is he aware that at Barton Bridge there is great danger to pedestrians, owing to the narrowness of the bridge, that the Ship Canal Company can do nothing about it and that his Department has said that, under the present law, it cannot spend one penny on it? If the right hon. Gentleman cannot call together a body of experts, will he consult me about it?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am sorry that the hon. Member should juxtapose himself with experts. I should be willing to consult both. I had a look at the bridge not long ago, and I have no reason to think that the company is not carrying out its duty satisfactorily.

Mr. Proctor: Did the right hon. Gentleman see the bridge from the canal or from the road?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: From both, Sir.

FLOOD DAMAGE, WOODMANSEY (CLAIM)

Mr. Odey: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will take steps to secure an early settlement of the claim of Captain Newlove, Bleach House Farm, Woodmansey, near Beverley, for repairs to his house and farm buildings caused by the extensive flooding of the land in March, 1950, for which full responsibility has been accepted by his Department.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As my hon. Friend will be aware, full responsibility in respect of this claim has not been accepted by my Department. Negotiations with a view to agreeing the appropriate figure in respect of certain issues are still continuing. I hope they will conclude soon.

Mr. Odey: Why does my right hon. Friend seek to avoid full responsibility for this matter, in view of the fact that the new culvert that was built in 1950 is now, with his agreement, being replaced by entirely new drains, and that it is quite obvious that the new culvert was the entire cause of the trouble? Secondly, does my right hon. Friend not consider that a settlement of this matter should have been reached before 3½ years had elapsed?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The reason I do not accept full responsibility is that in proceedings which were brought by the gentleman in question the action was compromised on terms agreed by him, which did not involve acceptance of full responsibility. It was settled just over a year ago. Discussion has taken place between experts on technical points, and I should not like to express an opinion as to where the responsibility for the delay lies.

Mr. Odey: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the first opportunity on the Adjournment.

SHIPPING (SECONDHAND SALES)

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation how many ships have been transferred from British ownership to ownership in Panama, Liberia, Honduras and Costa Rica, respectively, during the past five years.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: One hundred and forty-four ships of 500 gross tons and over were transferred from United Kingdom and colonial registry to registry in these countries from 1949 to 1953, and 22 during the first nine months of this year. I am circulating the breakdown of these figures in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Awbery: Is the Minister aware that those countries are traditionally non-maritime, that while the tonnage of this country remains the same as in 1939 the tonnage of Panama has gone up five times, and that this has been brought about because ship owners are transferring their ships to Panama in order to evade their obligations under the I.L.O.? Will the Minister take steps to prevent transfers of ships to Panama so that these evasions cannot be repeated?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: It is not a question of British ship owners so evading the restrictions. It is true that sales to these countries have increased, but the hon. Member, with his experience, will appreciate that we must be very careful about interfering in sales by British shipping companies of secondhand ships from which they can obtain funds to buy new ones.

Mr. Awbery: It is deliberately being done to evade obligations. Will the Minister prevent this?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If a ship is sold by a British company to a foreign concern, there can be no question of evasion of obligations by the British company.

Following are the figures:

Transfers from United Kingdom and Colonial Registry of vessels of 500 gross tons and over:




1949–53
1st January–30th September, 1954


To Panama
…
109
6


Liberia
…
14
7


Honduras
…
1
—


Costa Rica
…
20
9


Total
…
144
22

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on Government Business exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. (Sittings of the House). — [Mr. Crookshank.]

Orders of the Day — CIVIL DEFENCE (ARMED FORCES) BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered.

Clause 1.—(CIVIL DEFENCE TRAINING FOR PART-TIME NATIONAL SERVICE MEN, ETC.)

3.31 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth): I beg to move, in page 2, line 11, to leave out subsection (5).
The next Amendment, in page 2, line 20, at the end, to add:
(2) In this Act the expression "civil defence" includes any measures not amounting to actual combat for affording defence against any form of hostile attack by a foreign power or for depriving any form of hostile attack by a foreign power of the whole or part of its effect, whether the measures are taken before, at or after the time of the attack, and the expression "designated Minister" has the same meaning as in the Civil Defence Act, 1948.
in the name of my right hon. and gallant Friend, is linked with the one which I have moved, and with your permission, Mr. Speaker, it would be desirable that we should discuss the two together.
The Amendments are consequential upon Amendments which were accepted by my right hon. and gallant Friend in Committee. The definition of "civil defence" in subsection (5) of the Bill as now drafted would no longer operate in relation to Clause 2, which was originally a subsection of Clause 1. The opportunity has been taken to reconsider the drafting point which was raised by the hon. Drafting for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas).
Section 9 (1) of the Civil Defence Act, 1948, expressly excluded the provision or maintenance of shelter for the use of the Armed Forces from the meaning of "Civil Defence" for the purposes of that Act. The reason for the exclusion is obvious. It would be wrong, in the ordinary way, to make the Home Secretary or some other Minister of a civil Department responsible for the provision of shelter for the Armed Forces. But this exclusion seemed inappropriate where members of the Armed Forces were themselves engaging in Civil

Defence activities in the kind of way contemplated in the Bill.
For technical reasons, the definition contained in the 1948 Act was, strictly speaking, appropriate for the present Bill. I gave the reasons when the Bill was in Committee, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members who referred to this matter that the wording, though technically correct, might give rise to some misunderstanding. Indeed, they did so, during the course of the debate.
It is, therefore, proposed by means of these two Amendments to re-state the definition of "Civil Defence" as in the 1948 Act while leaving out the words which might give rise to confusion, since they are, in fact, irrelevant in this context.

Mr. Geoffrey de Freitas: The Joint Under-Secretary understated the case considerably by saying that it seemed inappropriate that the Bill should have been drafted as it was. I regard it as an admission by the Government that they have been extremely off-hand in their attitude to the Bill all the way through, which is characteristic of their attitude towards Civil Defence generally.
There was much confusion about the definition in the form in which it was before us the other day. The definition of "Civil Defence" to which we drew attention was that of the 1948 Act, which reads, in part:
'Civil Defence' does not include the provision or maintenance of a shelter which is used or intended to be used wholly or mainly by naval, military or air forces.
Yet the Bill was bringing the Services into Civil Defence.
I propose to say something on Third Reading about the fact that under the Bill the Home Office has to bear the expenses of these columns. I should like to know whether we are now to take it that by these Amendments air shelters for the military may still be borne on the Home Office Vote. I should like that point cleared up. I do not understand it.
What satisfaction I derive from seeing that the Government have accepted our point of view is far outweighed by the fact that the Government regard Civil Defence as so unimportant that they do not take care with the drawing up of the Bill. Even the Sunday cinema opening


Order for Market Rasen is more carefully drafted than this Bill. However, the Amendments make sense and do what we want, and, subject to the point which I mentioned being cleared up, we shall support them.

Mr. George Wigg: I thank the hon. Gentleman for dispersing some of the fog which surrounded our discussion last week. No doubt the Amendment is an improvement upon Section 9 of the Civil Defence Act, 1948, but I am not at all sure that the definition is adequate. I wonder whether the Minister has not raised other doubts in his efforts to clear up the doubts expressed last week.
The hon. Gentleman now talks about the definition of "Civil Defence" embracing any measures not amounting to actual combat. I have thought of a marginal case or two, and I want to put a specific one to him. During the last war there were, on the fringes of all our great cities, smoke companies formed from the Pioneer Corps. That was a function carried out by the Armed Forces of the Crown. Letting off smoke cannot by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as amounting to actual combat.
Are we to take it that the redrafting of the Clause has now brought within the scope of the Bill the work done by the smoke companies of the Pioneer Corps? Is that function now transferred to Civil Defence? In other words, in clearing up the drafting difficulties, have the Home Secretary and his Service colleagues really got down to the job of finding a line of demarcation, at least for responsibilities if not for functions, or are we to take it that because of the very great difficulties involved in settling responsibilities for shelters, the Government have cleared up the verbal difficulties but have created even greater difficulties which will be apparent when the Bill is put into practice?
Have the functions of the smoke companies of the Pioneer Corps now been transferred to the Home Secretary? Do we take it that training for that function will now be carried out at the new schools which are to be set up? Can we take it that as a result of the Amendments that work is now transferred from the Army to the Royal Air Force? That is one of the effects of the Amendments in practice.

Mr. Ian Harvey: I am not such an authority upon smoke screens as the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), but, having had something to do with that work during the war, I would point out to him that it is a military activity.

Mr. Wigg: That is what I said.

Mr. Harvey: I gathered that the hon. Gentleman said that it was not a military activity.

Mr. Wigg: Surely I did not say that. What I said was that the function of the smoke companies during the war was a military function carried out by the Pioneer Corps, but that no one could say that the smoke companies were in actual combat with the enemy. It is a marginal case.

Mr. Harvey: I do not agree that it is a marginal case, because the lighting up of a smoke screen is a military operation which is carried out to hide a particular target, and the people who are actively engaged in trying to hide the target themselves become a target just as much as those who are actively operating. Therefore, I think the hon. Gentleman's speech, though particularly interesting, is irrelevant.

Mr. F. J. Bellenger: There is another important matter connected with the second Amendment, to which the Under-Secretary referred. I see that Clause 3 of the Bill has the sub-title "Short Title," and it is perhaps at the end of line 20 in Clause 3 that we ought to add the Amendment which we are now discussing. Surely, the second Amendment is one of definition, and, therefore, should not appear in a Clause dealing with the Short Title of the Bill. Ought it not to be in the place to which the first Amendment relates—the Amendment which proposes to leave out subsection (5)? I should have thought that this Amendment, if carried, ought to appear at the end of line 20. If not, and it is to become the second part of Clause 3, it seems to me that the Short Title will have to be altered.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Could the Minister explain a little further the Amendment which he has submitted for the purpose of allowing the Civil Defence organisation to work on shelters for


the Navy, Army or the Air Force? Is it the case that the Government, as we have been told over and over again, have declared against deep shelters for the civilian population? Does it mean that in this Bill the Government intend to create more security for military personnel than for the civilian population?

Mr. Ede: I think my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) gave an example which requires some clearing up. I will take the answer that was attempted by the hon. Member who is an expert on military smoke screens and has carried that capacity into his civilian occupation. The Amendment says:
…the expression 'civil defence' includes any measures not amounting to actual combat"—
and I do not imagine that anyone has ever thought that people lighting smoke screens when there was no enemy anywhere near were engaged in actual combat—
for affording defence against any form of hostile attack by a foreign power or for depriving any form of hostile attack by a foreign power of the whole or part of its effect.
Surely, that is exactly what the object of a smoke screen is.

Mr. Ian Harvey: Nobody would light a smoke screen if there were no enemy anywhere near, because there would be no point in doing it.

Mr. Ede: My constituency was subjected to smoke screens during the last war, and whether there was any enemy in the neighbourhood or not, they were lighted every evening. I do not quite understand the relevance of the hon. Gentleman's intervention.

Mr. Harvey: If they were lighted every evening, then it was a gross waste of fuel, because, normally, the arrangement was that no smoke screens were lighted until it was reasonably thought that a hostile attack was threatened.

Mr. Speaker: This discussion seems to be very remote from the terms of the Amendment.

Mr. Ede: Quite frankly, what I fear from these Amendments is that some Civil Defence money—money that gets through the Estimates, in the first place, for Civil Defence purposes—will, in fact,

find its way into the sphere of military matters which are not really concerned with the protection of the civilian population.
I should like an assurance from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman or the Under-Secretary to the effect that these Amendments, if embodied in the Bill as the definition, will not be used by the Government to get money for the Service Departments which the House thinks is to be devoted to the actual defence of the civilian population by measures which the various designated Ministers have to carry out. I am quite sure that if people knew of some of the things done in the name of Civil Defence and those who will benefit from them if there is ever need to put them into operation, they would be astonished at the extent to which services other than those of the actual designated Ministers are the principal beneficiaries.

3.45 p.m.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: With the leave of the House, I will answer the points that have just been made. I can assure the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) that the cost of shelters for the use of the Armed Forces will not, of course, be borne on the Home Office Vote, and that the Amendment is of purely drafting effect and does not alter the meaning of the Bill at all.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) and the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) raised the question of what would come within the meaning of Civil Defence. Perhaps I may be allowed to reiterate what I said in moving the Amendment. All that we have done is to use the wording of the definition which was contained in the 1948 Act, and I think everyone would agree that it is essential that we should have the same definition here as we have in that Act, save that we have had to make this one exception to meet a drafting point raised in Committee.

Mr. Wigg: Before the hon. Gentleman put the Amendment on the Order Paper, did he consult the Service Ministers about both the wording and the meaning of the Amendment?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: The hon. Gentleman is not entitled to ask what consultations took place, but I can assure him that


all the appropriate consultations did, of course, take place.
I think it will be recognised that some types of activity cannot, per se, be classified as either Civil Defence or military, or both, and it may well be that the particular example which the hon. Member mentioned may be either Civil Defence or military. It would depend upon whether it came within the meaning of the definition which we suggest should be adopted here and which is contained in the Act of 1948; in other words, whether, broadly speaking, it amounts to actual combat. Clearly, a smoke screen designed for purely Civil Defence purposes would be Civil Defence, whereas one which is designed to protect troops in the field would not be Civil Defence; it would depend on the circumstances of the case.
I can certainly say, first, that it is not intended that this Bill should be used for the purpose of training smoke companies, and I give that assurance in response to the point raised by the hon. Member for Dudley. I would also give the wider assurance asked for by the right hon. Member for South Shields, that we do not intend by this Bill—indeed, it would be impossible—to transfer payments away from the Service Departments, where they properly fall, and put them on the Home Office.
There was one other point mentioned by the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), who asked whether it was necessary to transfer this definition from Clause 1 to Clause 3. The reason is that what we want to do is to make certain that we define Civil Defence for the purposes of Clause 2, as well as Clause 1. The right hon. Gentleman will see that there are now two Clauses before the Clause which we are proposing to amend by the second of these Amendments, and both of them must be covered.

Mr. W. R. Williams: In other words, the Short Title is now longer than the Long Title.

Mr. Bellenger: Would it not be the best plan to make a new Clause which could be the definition Clause—as, indeed, was done in the original 1948 Act—and to make Clause 3 into Clause 4?

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 3.—(SHORT TITLE.)

Amendment made: In page 2, line 20, at end, add:
(2) In this Act the expression "civil defence" includes any measures not amounting to actual combat for affording defence against any form of hostile attack by a foreign power or for depriving any form of hostile attack by a foreign power of the whole or part of its effect, whether the measures are taken before, at or after the time of the attack, and the expression "designated Minister" has the same meaning as in the Civil Defence Act, 1948.—[Major Lloyd-George.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

3.51 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Major Gwilym Lloyd-George): I would remind the House, as I did on Second Reading, that the Bill has been introduced for the purposes of a specific scheme and that the powers which the House has been asked to approve are for a limited purpose. They are the minimum necessary to provide a first step —I emphasise that—towards the development of a Civil Defence mobile column force. I emphasise that the taking of this first step will not prejudice in any way the introduction of wider measures. These are now under active consideration, and the Government are considering what form they should assume.
I recognise that hon. Members on the opposite side of the House have had misgivings about the Bill. I gathered from the speeches made on the Second Reading that they would like to have been presented at this stage with a complete picture of all the plans to be made in the field of Civil Defence and, in particular, in the matter of mobile columns. The Government are not at this moment in a position to do that, but we are insisting that, in the meantime, the scheme for which the Bill provides must go forward. We cannot afford to waste this valuable source of manpower, or to incur any delay in making the necessary physical preparations for its use.
I can give the House this express assurance, that this scheme, whatever happens as a result of the review, will have an essential place in any scheme devised for strengthening the aid to be given, should the need arise, to the local forces of the Civil Defence and fire authorities throughout the country.

3.54 p.m.

Mr. Wigg: The Minister has told us that this Bill is a first step. I hope he is right. Every hon. Member on this side of the House will accept it as the first step, but we want to know when the second, third and further steps will come along. In three or four months' time we shall have the Defence White Paper and if we have not then been told what the further steps are to be, we shall expect to find the answers in the White Paper together with the results of the Government's investigations into Civil Defence, which have been going on during the last few months.
I believe that every member of the Labour Party wants to see adequate Civil Defence. [Interruption.] One of my hon. Friends makes reference to Coventry. I remember what happened to Coventry during the war. I do not want to see that happen again. I believe that Coventry wants its Civil Defence to be a reality. It does not want smoke screens or a pantomime Civil Defence which exists only on paper. It certainly does not want Civil Defence, or the lack of it, to be used as a means of besmirching political opponents. For heaven's sake let us try to do in Civil Defence what we have done in other defence matters —let us have our differences, but let us keep Civil Defence above the narrow give and take of party.
I do not believe that astronomical sums of money need be spent on Civil Defence and I do not believe that we should tie down a very considerable number of men waiting for atomic attacks which never come; but we must have realistic Civil Defence. We must make sure that we do not get overburdened by military advice. I am a little worried on this point because it may look as if I am contradicting what I have said previously. I want to see the Armed Forces play a very full part in Civil Defence, but I want them to be under civil direction. I am a little worried about the emergence of retired generals into our public life. We have them in the B.B.C., in N.A.T.O., and here, there and everywhere, lots of them. They may have admirable qualities but democracy does not thrive in this country on directives. We need spontaneous co-operation down to the point of action. We do not get that kind of thing in generals who have spent their lives waiting for the next directive.
I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will get every support, but not the kind of support which means looking back to see whether the space between his two shoulder blades is still intact. We know what the right hon. and learned Gentleman is up against in fighting the Service Departments. Bows and arrows are quite good enough for some of them, combined with Trooping the Colour and other forms of ceremonial. Those are all right when we can afford to pay for them. As far as we can afford to pay for them, let us have them now. They will not do us any great harm, but we must not have too much, if it is at the price of efficiency. We must have a streamlined defence which is not based upon grandiose display but upon value for money.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman and his defence colleagues must play the role of miser and see that for every penny spent they get if possible 1¼d.'s worth of value. Let us base Civil Defence on the principle of public service. Let us use the Bill to encourage the desire to serve, If the Bill can make our young National Service men more efficient, so much the better. In so far as the Home Secretary does that, he need not worry. Let him come here for support if he needs our help. We may keep him a little longer than he expects, but he can rely on us to support him in his efforts to weld the Armed Forces of the Crown and the Civil Defence Force into a working Civil Defence team.

4.0 p.m.

Mr. de Freitas: On Second Reading, and during the other stages of this Bill, we argued that it was evidence of the failure of the Government on Reserve policy. This afternoon, in a reply to a supplementary question, the Under-Secretary of State for Air indicated that the policy of the Air Ministry was to reduce the number of National Service men by taking in more Regulars. I am not arguing against that, but I am wondering whether the full implication of such a remark has been considered in connection with the reservists for these mobile columns.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward): I do not think I said anything about reducing the number; I merely said what was the quota of National Service men in the R.A.F. at present.

Mr. de Freitas: My right hon. Friend and others understood the Under-Secretary to indicate that it was the policy of the Air Ministry to get the National Service men to become Regulars and, in that way, to reduce the pool of men with National Service Reserve obligations.

Mr. Ward: No.

Mr. de Freitas: Then that point is cleared up.
The fact is that this Bill, all the way through, has been evidence of the failure of the Government in the field of reserves. We shall judge now whether the Government have a true sense of urgency by the way they get going with mobile columns. We supported the principle of these columns and we support the Bill.
During the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) an hon. Member interrupted to say that even Coventry wanted Civil Defence. The fact is that the Coventry trouble was born out of Home Office dither; it was the Home Office which was to blame. This does not mean that we support what Coventry did, but the Government must learn that time is getting shorter, and it may well be that the next time we have a Civil Defence debate it will be our duty to the country to show our lack of confidence in the policy of the Government on Civil Defence by dividing the House.
The first task for these mobile columns will be to build up their prestige, because they appear to come into existence to cover up the mistakes and embarrassments of the Service Departments. They will not automatically have the prestige of, say, the Brigade of Guards or of some other famous brigade of the British Army, but we must see that these columns feel that they are the brigade of guards of Civil Defence because they must have prestige if they are to do their job.
On the Report stage I spoke of the casual way in which this Bill was drawn up. We amended it to meet our point on the definition of Civil Defence, and there is another Amendment we made in Committee to which I must refer. It will be remembered that Clause 2 was not originally a separate Clause, but came to us tucked away as a subsection of Clause 1. It is right that it should be a separate Clause, because it recognises formally the fact that Civil Defence

is more than a Home Office and local authority matter. Of course, we have to prepare our defences against atomic war, nerve gas war and high explosive war. Also, we must remember that in atomic war and in nerve gas war the traditional local authority Civil Defence is not enough, and the mobile columns are the first step towards that recognition.
I agree with the hon. Member for Dudley that this emphasis on military mobile columns does not mean that the traditional local democratically controlled Civil Defence is no longer required. In an atomic attack it would have a great part to play, especially in the relief of distress in other areas. If there was high explosive attack it would have a rôle similar to that which it had in the last war.
The Bill recognises this obligation of the Armed Forces to take part in Civil Defence, yet, under Clause 1 (4), the Home Office has to bear the cost of these columns. This is absurd. The Home Office Civil Defence budget is very small as it is, and I have no confidence that the Home Secretary will get any more money at the expense of the Ministry of Defence. Civil Defence must have more money, and the only place from which it can get it is the Services. But in subsection (4) there is clear evidence that the "brass hats" have won because the Home Office is to pay for these mobile columns.
The Minister of Defence is a master of camouflage; he spent most of this Session, as Minister of Housing and Local Government, introducing a Bill to raise rents and disguising it as a crusade on the slums. So I beg the Home Secretary to be careful when he is discussing Civil Defence with his right hon. Friend, because if the Minister of Defence follows his usual practice he will convince the Home Secretary that H.M.S. "Vanguard" is a police launch and ranks for Home Office grant.
As the Bill stands, subsection (4) is a complete surrender to the Service chiefs. This time, we let the Government off with a caution. The Government are relying on the fact that the country will either forget or forgive their promise to cut the cost of living—that may happen—but the country will not forget or forgive a Government which, in the words of Lord Montgomery, has grossly neglected our fourth arm of Defence.

4.7 p.m.

Mr. Ian Harvey: I follow the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) with pleasure because he has enunciated in his speech the determination of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite not to divide the House on this issue. He himself, because of the deep interest has has shown in Civil Defence, has been consistent in taking that line. Perhaps I may take up two points made by the hon. Gentleman. First, he said that this Bill arose out of the Government's failure to deal with the National Service situation. That is not true.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Montgomery said that.

Mr. Harvey: The hon. Gentleman perhaps takes his orders from what Field Marshal Montgomery says; we do not.
The hon. Member for Lincoln knows rather better than most, having been at both the Air Ministry and the Home Office, that the nature of the R.A.F. is such that it cannot absorb effectively the complete total of reservists available and, as has been fully admitted in this debate, nobody wants to call up people for no purpose. I believe that this arrangement has certain shortcomings which have been fully discussed, but that it is a satisfactory and reasonable one I want to pay tribute to the clear definition of the National Service system which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Air gave during the Committee stage of the Bill. It was an absolutely factual, fair and sensible one.
The hon. Member for Lincoln then said something which I found extraordinary, knowing the origin of mobile columns to have been partially in his own mind. He said that the idea of the mobile column was an embarrassment and suggested that it was something with which the Home Office was not equipped to deal.

Mr. de Freitas: I certainly did not mean to say that.

Mr. Harvey: Even if the mobile column is a great embarrassment to hon. Gentlemen opposite, we must pay a tribute to the hon. Gentleman himself for, in the previous Government, he played a considerable part in initiating the introduction of the prototype mobile column. I should like to ask him whether, when he set on foot that proposal, he had in mind that they should be paid for by the Home Office or by the Services? I think

he had in mind that the cost would be met very fully by the Home Office.

Mr. de Freitas: It never occurred to me that the military troops in a mobile column should be paid for out of the Home Office Civil Defence budget—I am speaking from memory.

Mr. Harvey: I fully accept that explanation.
If I may, I should like to follow the hon. Member for Lincoln in his plea to my right hon. Friend on this extremely important subject of the development of mobile columns. Because of the views which I have expressed in these debates I know that my right hon. and gallant Friend will acquit me of any form of disloyalty when I say that we should look at the matter a little more carefully. The answers which have been given as to who shall pay the various elements in the mobile columns, and the indications as to how the men for the mobile columns are to be trained will not, I think, on examination, prove an entirely satisfactory proposition.
The prototype mobile column, which the hon. Member for Lincoln and I had the pleasure of seeing on the first day of its assembly, has taught Civil Defence a great lesson, but that lesson will only be learnt if the prototype system is extended, in cadre, to the areas, and actual cadre mobile columns established area by area. I do not believe that the present generalised system for assembling the resources available for mobile columns, as indicated by my right hon. and gallant Friend, will produce quite the result that is intended.
I accept very fully what my right hon. Friend said on Second Reading, that this is only a small Measure which, eventually, has to be read against the big one to come. I do not agree with the misgivings expressed by the hon. Member for Lincoln that my right hon. and gallant Friend will not be able to get the money out of the Minister of Defence. I sincerely trust that he will be able to get greater resources for Civil Defence from defence funds. He will certainly have the support of many of my hon. Friends in any effort he may make to achieve that.

Mr. Wigg: Would the hon. Member say that his hon. Friends would follow us in the Division Lobby?

Mr. Harvey: The procedure of following the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) anywhere is full of pitfalls.
I do not share the rather cynical view expressed by the hon. Member for Lincoln about the achievement of the present Minister of Defence. I do not find the building of 300,000 houses a year a facade of any kind. The Bill having been given the full support of all hon. Members, I sincerely hope that it will go forward, that the views expressed—without, generally, any party point being made—on both sides will be noted, and that the Bill may be read against what, we hope, will be a greater and more progressive Measure in the not too distant future.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. R. H. S. Crossman: I cannot join in the valedictory cooing about this Bill. I do not take the view that a thing is necessarily harmless because it is small. This is a small step in the wrong direction, and nothing that has been said during the various stages of the Bill will convince me to the contrary. The Minister made exactly the same speech this time as before, only shorter. The same Bill—the same speech.

Mr. Ian Harvey: Consistent.

Mr. Crossman: He answered none of the questions which we asked on Second Reading.
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman tells us now that, in view of the great scheme of Civil Defence in prospect, it is essential to get this little thing done before February or March, but he gave absolutely no reason why this particular thing had to be started last July in another place and brought forward as a matter of urgency. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman did not deny that, as a result of this essential first step, the net effect will be that the first men will only be in by 1958, nor that his mobile columns will be activated only after all the H-bombs have fallen and all the damage done.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) is not here. I am a little baffled by the view, expressed even on this side of the House, that one cannot afford to have mobile columns doing nothing in peacetime.

That is rather like saying that one cannot afford a fire brigade until the house is burning; that one cannot afford a police force until the burglars are in the house. In Committee, an hon. Member described this as a Cinderella Measure, but Cinderella did have her moment of glory. There is no moment of glory about this, because we shall all be blown to pieces before the first mobile column can conceivably come into operation. The Minister can say what he likes, but someone must explain what is the good of a mobile column which will not be in action until well after the war has started.
I was not one of those who was eating turtle soup at the Mansion House last night, when the Prime Minister made a very important statement on this subject. He said that it was not a question of who gets hit—I suppose we all do—but a question of the time-table of warfare. I think we all know what he meant. He meant what was said in the White Paper published in February; that the next general war, if it comes, will start with an interchange of thermo-nuclear weapons. It is laid down in the strategy on which the whole of our defence systems are based that we are to drop the things first. We must reckon on the bombs being dropped on the first day of the war.
It is, therefore, relevant to ask what is the good of a scheme which trains a few R.A.F. National Service men, lets them disappear again into civilian life, and says "Somehow, we shall collect them again"—some months after the first week of the war. Why is it essential that that should be done before February? Last February we were told of the grand plan for Civil Defence. I am glad hon. Members on this side understand the position of Coventry. In Coventry, we have studied this from a practical point of view. Outside of London we were the first city to be blitzed. We had religiously carried out every one of the instructions of the then Home Secretary. We had put our brown paper on the windows; we had our air raid wardens dispersed over the city, with the central control above ground and with underground telephone lines. We did everything that the then Home Secretary told us to do, and, within 20 minutes, the whole of that organisation had been destroyed—and destroyed by 500 lb. bombs.
Now we are told that we are to have an organisation which is to be exactly the same, except for this great new thing the mobile columns, which will actually have been called up successfully three months after we have been destroyed. Nevertheless, it is said that this is the first great action to be taken; something so important that time must be wasted, first in the other place in July and now here.
Could we please know, before the end of this Third Reading debate, what— apart from the Under-Secretary's gorgeous phrase about the encouraging and stimulating peacetime effect—is the effect of the mobile columns except to deceive ourselves in peacetime? What other effect will there be in training the men, except to make one believe that in peacetime something is being done when actually nothing whatsoever will have been done? That is the first question I asked on Second Reading. I ask it again now, because nothing has since come out to answer it.
We had a very interesting debate in Committee about the presence on the Defence Committee of the Home Secretary. We were told that it is not necessary; that, after all, he is called there whenever he is required. If the Secretary of State for Air were just called in to the Defence Committee when required, he might think that he was not getting quite the status in the Defence Committee which he deserved, and the type of Home Secretary who is willing to be called in to the Defence Committee when required is the type of Home Secretary who permits the Services to dominate this matter and give him the fag end of the spare time of the R.A.F. when it has got nothing else to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley is quite right. The only point of this Bill is to find some occupation for the R.A.F. National Service men who might otherwise have an unfair advantage over the National Service men in the Army; and that is what the Home Secretary has decked out as an essential Measure.
In Coventry, we shall not, as a result of this Bill, cease to believe that Civil Defence is an organised hypocrisy and an organised fraud, even though, in the eternal words of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, it has a stimulating effect in peacetime. This

Bill is a perfect addition to the control centre above ground, which is growing in Coventry every day as a mausoleum to commemorate the crass, platitudinous stupidity of the Under-Secretary. I am glad it is there. I am glad of every brick which is laid there to commemorate the Under-Secretary who survived the deluge of the Prime Minister's reshuffle of the Cabinet. The one thing that he was bound to leave was the Under-Secretary who deals with Civil Defence, for without him where would Coventry's protest be?
As long as he is there as the expression of organised hypocrisy, we can with justice pay the 2½d. rate for the privilege of not participating in a Civil Defence plan which solemnly tells us that we are going to have mobile columns which will help us three months after the bombs have dropped, and we have to spend all our time here passing a special Act of Parliament to ensure that not one of the men will be organised in time for duty when the moment of crisis arrives.
I am rather amazed that my hon. Friends were able to support this Bill. Perhaps they support it because they, also, in their heart of hearts, think that we ought not to have any Civil Defence.

Mr. de Freitas: If my hon. Friend was not able to hear my speech on Second Reading——

Mr. Crossman: I was.

Mr. de Freitas: I am sorry. I thought that on Second Reading I made the position abundantly clear. Of course, we understood the Coventry gesture, and we called upon the Government to give us a policy; otherwise, in the next Civil Defence debate we would certainly have to reconsider our attitude.

Mr. Crossman: This is a slight violation of our ban on fraternal frank discussion. I find it mystifying for someone who is concerned with Civil Defence to support a Bill which does not provide Civil Defence at the moment of crisis, and which leaves the Home Secretary right outside the Defence Committee, taking odds and sods from the Services instead of having any——

Mr. Ian Harvey: The hon. Member is making a most insulting reference to the people who have been called up, and who are in no way odds and sods of any kind.

Mr. Crossman: I withdraw the phrase "odds and sods" and I will say "manpower or bodies for which no Service can find any useful occupation." That is what is being allocated to the priority of saving the home front in time of war.
All I would say to my hon. Friend is this. Having exposed the utter futility of this Bill, and the fact that it is a piece of organised hypocrisy and is not part of a serious Civil Defence plan but is merely an addition to the futilities that we have had before, having joined with me in trying to expose its utter futility, he should join me in the Division Lobby.

4.25 p.m.

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: I only heard the latter part of the speech of the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). As usual, he abuses his great gift of oratory to make as much mischief as he possibly can in the Press and in the country. He knows perfectly well, as do others who have attended this debate, that this is only a small Bill dealing with one specific subject—that of mobile columns.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Why?

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: The answer has been given no fewer than four times, as the hon. Member would know if he had been here during the whole of these discussions. The answer, for the benefit of those hon. Gentlemen who do not read their HANSARD, is that there is taking place at this moment an overall survey of the whole situation which has been created by the new menace of the hydrogen bomb.

Mr. Crossman: rose——

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have only been on my feet a minute.

Mr. Crossman: The hon. and gallant Gentleman attacked me without having heard what I said.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: There is now being undertaken a general survey of the whole new situation created by this devastating weapon, and it is impossible to expect a report on that matter to have been issued by this time.

Mr. Crossman: Hear, hear.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: What was done by the Government was this. There was clearly going to be one aspect of Civil Defence which, apart from anything that the report may say, would have to be an integral part of any future Civil Defence organisation in this country, and that integral part of which we are speaking is the mobile columns. Therefore, the Government would have been guilty of tardiness and neglect had they waited for the overall report to have been made before bringing in this Bill. This Bill would have had to be introduced anyway, and there is no reason why this small Bill should not be introduced now while we are waiting for the overall report because, as I have said, these mobile columns will have to form an integral part of any future Civil Defence plan.
The answer to those who ask the reason for mobile columns is surely simple. Only columns operating from outside a devastated area will be able to do anything inside that area; and, therefore, it is vitally important to plan these mobile columns. Indeed, I believe we shall have to go much further on this question of mobile columns than is contemplated at the moment.

Mr. Crossman: Hear, hear.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: All Civil Defence will have to be mobile, and its personnel will have to brought in from outside.

Mr. Crossman: Hear, hear.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: The hon. Gentleman keeps saying, "Hear, hear." Why is he complaining, then?

Mr. Crossman: The hon. and gallant Gentleman walks into this House and attacks me for saying things, not even having heard the part of my speech in which I dealt with those things. I agree that Civil Defence should all be mobile, but why bring in a puny little Bill which does not make it mobile and, indeed, only enables the columns to be called up after the war has started?

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: For the simple reason that until the overall plan has been decided upon, it cannot be known what proportion can be mobile, but there is no harm in having these people trained to form mobile columns first. At least, there will be something on which to build.


One has heard of cadres building on cadres as being one of the principles of the defence of this country for many years. Is there any reason why we should not build on cadres in this case?
I am not going to deal with this point any longer. I want to repeat what I have said before and what, no doubt, I shall say again: I hope that whoever is given charge of this organisation will see his way, as politicians apparently are unable, to give training to these people in driving vehicles at night. I am getting almost tired of saying that, but it is not the slightest good wasting time training these people in fire-fighting, rescue work and all the rest if, when the time comes, they will not be able to drive their vehicles to the scene of action. It takes a long time to do this. It is a highly skilled job. The regional commissioner will have to give orders by wireless to the mobile columns; he will not be able to do it in any other way.
One thing I should like to know is this. Why has the Home Guard not been mentioned? We have heard about Regular troops and Territorials and part-time Service men, and so on, but we have not heard a word about the Home Guard. Surely the Home Guard is the one force which will be here in England if there is a crisis. There is no reason why the Home Guard should not duplicate its duties and be trained—as, in fact, in my constituency Home Guards were in the last war—in Civil Defence duties as well.
All the little difficulties about command and administration could be easily overcome. Such difficulties are only smoke screens put up by people who do not want to accept the proposition. We know perfectly well that these difficulties could be overcome. I implore the Government to take seriously the point on wireless communication and that on training these columns in actual movement.

4.31 p.m.

Mr. Bellenger: I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) was quite right when he said the Opposition had given their blessing to this Bill. It is true that we are not voting against it, but I do not think that we could take any other course. Surely his argument has been to insist that this and something more comprehensive than this is needed.
The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) has posed some of the questions at earlier stages of this Bill, about what the Government intend to do when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament. I understand the difficulties of the Home Secretary, who is not able to draw the curtain aside, as it were, and show us what the Government really intend to do about national defence, of which Civil Defence is only a part.
We have been pressing the Government to tell us what those intentions are. Indeed, we believe that when the Government tells us what their comprehensive plan is, this Bill will then be lost in the limbo of a much wider Act of Parliament or series of Acts of Parliament which the Government may be forced to put on the Statute Book.
Our trouble is, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East will realise this, too, that if Civil Defence is necessary, and I think he agrees that Civil Defence is necessary—certainly the constituency he represents agrees that it is —then we must have an effective form of Civil Defence. The real question he posed is whether this system, which is enshrined in this Bill, of calling up 15,000 or 30,000 Royal Air Force National Service reservists for whom the Air Ministry can find no other work, is the right way to do it.
In early stages of the Bill, we have probed this weakness—we think it is a weakness—by asking the Home Secretary, or another Government spokesman, what will happen if war should break out and the National Service Air Force reservists are mobilised as a Civil Defence arm. We have been told by the Home Secretary himself that it is really in the first year of war that these men will be wanted for Civil Defence. But, what happens a year later, when the Air Ministry has got going thoroughly and presumably wants these men back? We think that is a weakness of this Bill.
That question has not been answered and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry is quite right in throwing doubts on the essence of the Bill—whether those who are to provide Civil Defence will be available. I have never complained about military reservists,


whether Air Force or Army, acting as mobile columns in Civil Defence. What we do complain about——

Mr. Frank Bowles: On a point of order. I do not know whether the Chamber is on fire, or whether we ought to bring up stirrup pumps, but there is a lot of smoke coming from the Gallery. Could you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, have inquiries made.

Mr. Crossman: A smoke screen from the left.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): I have taken steps regarding it.

Mr. Bellenger: We have not passed this Bill yet, and it is obvious that any steps to be taken in the matter which my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles) has raised will not affect Royal Air Force National Service reservists.
I was going on to say we have doubts. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East has posed some of them in his usual emphatic way and the Home Secretary must recognise those doubts. If this Bill is going to be really effective then it would be wrong of the Opposition to oppose the Government. Indeed, on all stages of the Bill we have shown we were trying to help them to get what they say they really want, an effective Civil Defence.
I make this personal appeal to the Home Secretary. He is a Member of the Cabinet and I suspect that in principle he already knows about some of that comprehensive review of defence of which he spoke today and during earlier debates in this House. I suspect that he does. I suspect it is because he knows that, that he is insisting it is necessary to have this Bill. I urge him to do all he can to see that the House is placed in full possession of more of the facts than we have had so far.
After all, the Opposition is part of Parliament, and it is our duty to take part in ensuring that the Defence Forces of this country are the hest we can possibly have if, unfortunately, we are faced with the difficulties envisaged in this Bill. We should have more of that defence review placed before us. I believe that when the House sees that review it will be seen that there are to be revolutionary changes, not

only in Civil Defence, but in other parts of the defence of this country.
Already, we have had suggestions made in the newspapers that the Minister of Defence is now considering the antiaircraft defences of this country. Obviously, it would be out of order to discuss that at this moment, but these matters reveal themselves to the country and to Parliament, as it were, in dribs and drabs. I suggest that the proper way to deal with Civil Defence, which is probably the fourth arm of defence in the country, is for us to know the facts on which we can base a sensible judgment.
The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing has voiced some of his own doubts. He has had great experience of training soldiers in war with a much greater discipline than one could probably get in Civil Defence forces. He knows the difficulties that arise when bombs are raining down—whether atom bombs or other bombs—in making sure that one's columns, whether mobile or supply, can reach their target.
It is not the slightest good thinking that these 15,000 or 30,000 men, who will receive rudimentary training—because in my opinion that is all they will get—will be all that will be needed. It is like trying to put out a fire with a pint pot of water. It cannot be done. We shall have to have better defence forces than this Bill envisages.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred to the Home Guard. I think that the Home Guard come under Armed Forces of the Crown. If they do, they are under a Service Minister, in this case Secretary of State for War. They do not come under Civil Defence in this Bill except, I presume, that under Clause 1 of the Bill they could be called up equally with all the other Armed Forces should the necessity arise. Perhaps whoever is to reply to the debate will clear up this doubt.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I understand the Bill to deal with Regular Forces and part-time Service men and not with volunteers. When I say volunteers I am not talking about Regular volunteers but amateur volunteers, so to speak, and not professional.

Mr. Ede: It all depends on whether they are members of the Armed Forces.

Mr. Bellenger: Clause 2 deals with that point, when it says:
It is hereby declared that the duties which members of the Armed Forces of the Crown may be called upon…
I take it that that is comprehensive. The phrase "Armed Forces of the Crown" surely comprises Regular forces and ancillary Forces, Territorials, Home Guard and others. If there is any doubt upon this point, surely the Minister can easily clear it up.
While we do not give this Bill our blessing, we recognise the duty of a responsible Opposition to join with the Government in providing adequate, efficient and effective forces for our defence if, unfortunately, we are attacked by our enemies.

4.40 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: In an interjection in the speech of the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Ian Harvey) I pointed out that the most severe critic of Civil Defence at the present time was no less a person than Field Marshal Montgomery. In reply he said that if I took my orders from Field Marshal Montgomery he did not. I certainly pay the respect to Lord Montgomery that his position in the military world deserves, and when he tells us that our Civil Defence has been grossly neglected I assume that he speaks the truth, and I think he deserves to be protected from his enemies on the other side of the House.
Surely at this time, when we are discussing a Civil Defence Bill after about five years of rearmament, the fact that one of the leading military strategists of the day tells us that Civil Defence is grossly neglected constitutes an indictment of the policy of the Government? If that is so, we are entitled to examine the Bill in order to see what defence the Government have against the gratuitous and well premeditated attack of Field Marshal Montgomery.
I have been surprised that on occasions when we have discussed the possibility of future attacks upon us the Minister of Defence has never made any attempt to give us an explanation of the Government's plans. Why has he not been in the House to explain the background to us? In previous debates upon this question I have pointed out that we are also entitled to have something more than

a casual intervention from the Secretary of State for Scotland. In the last two debates the practice has been for the Home Secretary to open and the Joint Under-Secretary of State to wind up. As a Scottish Member I feel justified in asking that the spokesman for the Scottish Office should make some attempt to deal with problems affecting Scotland.
We have never seen the Secretary of State for Scotland in these debates, and the only intervention from the Joint Under-Secretary—perhaps because he has been present in a purely decorative capacity and has not been allowed to say anything on behalf of Scotland—was in reply to a very definite question that could not be evaded, namely, where the headquarters of the mobile column in Scotland were to be situated. His answer was that the Government have not yet decided that matter.
What is the background to this problem? We are presumably to expect atom-bomb and H-bomb attacks in the event of another war. In his opening speech, the Home Secretary said that in one H-bomb attack we could expect more darn-age than we suffered in the whole of the last war. We have been told that London and an area within a radius of 50 miles around it was likely to be totally destroyed.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) described this Measure as a pill for an earthquake. The only proposal contained in the Bill in relation to the huge population of London is that a mobile column will operate from Epsom.
I listened with very great respect and interest to the speeches made by the military gentlemen in this debate, and to that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) who has recently been attending the manoeuvres in Germany and who called the Bill a "Box and Cox" Measure. A "Box and Cox" Measure is not likely to give much assurance to the civilian population. My right hon. Friend added that, under the impact of hydrogen or atom bombs, there is no longer any such thing as Civil Defence.
I believe that he was stating the truth, and that all this talk about establishing some kind of organisation—the Government cannot define it—is merely an


attempt to reassure the civilian population instead of a realistic picture, facing the fact that if we have H-bombs dropped upon us all these preparations are hardly likely to affect the position.
What would happen if half a dozen H-bombs were dropped on this country? In the previous debate we were told that this question is so urgent that we need an immediate conference of the Big Four in order to deal immediately with the position. The Prime Minister, very rightly and patriotically, has repeatedly stressed his concern at the possibility of an H-bomb attack. In Air Force debates, when the argument is put forward for a bigger Air Force, it is said, "Oh, yes; the Russians have 20,000 aircraft." It is safe to assume that if they have 20,000 aircraft, at least 20 of them—one thousandth of the total—will be able to drop 20 H-bombs upon us.
We must therefore envisage a situation in which this country will be turned overnight into a smouldering radioactive cemetery. I would point out that if that is so—and it would appear to be so, judging from the answers which the Prime Minister gave to Questions yesterday—we are in danger mainly because we are preparing to send our bombers to destroy the cities of other countries. If we did not intend to send out our bombers to do so we should not be in danger ourselves.

Sir Thomas Moore: No.

Mr. Hughes: The hon. Member does not read the speeches of the Prime Minister. Over and over again the right hon. Gentleman has stressed the fact that we are in danger, and need Civil Defence, because we have allowed the American Air Force to base its atom bombers here. The only way to remove the apprehension is to have these atom bombers taken away.
We have the authority of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw that the military authorities are groping in the dark about the new warfare nearly as much as the rest of us are. I do not believe that we should blame the military authorities. These decisions are essentially political decisions of the House of Commons, and if ever we do have a war of this kind the Front Bench opposite, who are responsible for these affairs, will

ultimately find themselves on the lamp posts, and probably rightly so.
The speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, who is a former Secretary of State for War, should be broadcast throughout the length and breadth of the country, because in it he showed how impotent, in the face of the development of scientific weapons, the military gentlemen are. They will, of course, say that they are only carrying out a decision of the House of Commons, and so it is we in this House who are ultimately responsible. My right hon. Friend said:
I believe that when atom bombs begin to fall most of these services will be destroyed and it will not be the civilian authorities who will be able to put them into operation again.

Mr. Bellenger: By "services" I meant local government services such as the supplying of water, and things like that.

Mr. Hughes: Yes. I understood that my right hon. Friend meant that. My right hon. Friend envisaged a state of affairs in which water supplies, electricity, sanitation, and all such services would be obliterated. He went on to say that the restoration of all these services
…will have to be done by the military, as happened during the heavy bombing of Caen and all the other towns during the advance through Normandy in the last war."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 2189.]
What a responsibility we are putting on the military. We expect to have an area with a radius of 15 miles from London destroyed, and we are going to give to the military the task of restoring the public services in London, although according to the strategy of war the military will not be here, because they will be somewhere in Germany. My right hon. Friend went on to talk about his experiences in Germany. He said:
From my experience of seeing an operation in Germany in which atom bombs and similar missiles were theoretically used, I am convinced that it will be impossible for civil authorities, or, indeed, military authorities to operate to any extent above ground."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 2190.]
Where are we to go if we are not to be above ground? We shall be underground. We talk about mobile columns, but I do not know how much mobility there is likely to be underground.
Are the headquarters of the operations to be underground? If they are, I should


think that the proper place for headquarters would be some coalfield in South Wales, some beautiful coalmine waiting to be made into headquarters for Field Marshal Montgomery and all the rest of the military authorities. But where are the headquarters to be? Above ground in Epsom. And from Epsom there is to be operated a mobile column which is to come to the rescue of the people of London.
What is this mobile column to do? I have listened with great interest and respect to a definition of a mobile column. This is what the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) said:
The whole object of a mobile column is to keep it outside the area of damage and under the command of some central authority." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 2191.]
So there is to be a mobile column which is to keep outside the area of damage. If it is going to keep outside the area of damage what is it going to do? All that we get from the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing is not a definition of what a mobile column is to do but an insistence that it should be trained in driving vehicles. He said on another occasion:
Let us not talk about further training in fire-fighting."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th November, 1954 Vol. 532, c. 650.]

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I did not say that.

Mr. Hughes: I am quoting from HANSARD what the hon. and gallant Member said, and he can check it in HANSARD. Perhaps the hon. and gallant Member does not remember what he does say. I hope that the mobile column is to be run more proficiently than that.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: The hon. Member really cannot get away with all this. First of all he quoted me as having said that the mobile columns will stay outside the area of operations. What I actually said was that they will be stationed outside the area of operations and will come into the area of damage after the attack. That is point number one. Point number two is this. The hon. Member said that I said that they will not do fire-fighting and rescue work, but will concentrate on their vehicles. I did not say that. Of course they will have to do fire-fighting and rescue work, but they must also learn to drive their vehicles.

Mr. Hughes: In regard to the hon. and gallant Member's first correction, I would point out that I was quoting what he said:
The whole object of a mobile column is to keep it outside the area of damage."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1954 Vol. 531, c. 2191.]
If it is to keep outside the area of damage I do not see what earthly use it is going to be to the people inside the area of damage.

Dr. H. Morgan: Perhaps there will not be any left there.

Mr. Hughes: We ought to have here the Minister of Defence to explain exactly what the military mind means.
The hon. and gallant Member, later in the same speech, said:
When a disaster has taken place the column will be unhurt."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1954; 531, c. 2191.]
The Home Secretary has already told us exactly where the mobile column will be. For the benefit, presumably, of the forces that are going to attack us he has explained that it is to be at Epsom, and he very considerately assumes that the Russian air force will leave Epsom alone so that this mobile column will be able to get going. If Epsom is to be a headquarters for Civil Defence it is a natural assumption of the non-military mind that the potential enemy may attack the mobile column first.
Now I come to the question of firefighting. The hon. and gallant Member's interventions in this debate remind me of the famous words of Clemenceau to the effect that "War is far too dangerous a thing to be left to soldiers." This is what the hon. and gallant Member said——

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: On a point of order. Is it in order to quote verbatim what a Member has said without actually using HANSARD and reading from it? The hon. Member is reading from his own manuscript notes.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am not sure what the point of order is.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I am inquiring, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether it is in order for an hon. Member to quote, as if he were quoting verbatim from HANSARD, the words of another Member when in fact he is quoting only from his own manuscript notes.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: An hon. Member may do that if he wants to.

Mr. Hughes: I have too much respect for the House to quote at length the speeches of the hon. and gallant Member, especially as on this subject they are all really one and the same speech, but he certainly said:
Let us not talk about further training in fire-fighting."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th November, 1954; Vol. 532, c. 650.]
London may be in flames, and here is the hon. and gallant Member saying, "Do not talk about fire-fighting." To my mind that is simply being irrelevant.
If the mobile columns are not to come in to attempt to put out the fires, if they are to remain somewhere outside, I want to know what exactly is the function of mobile columns. I have not yet heard any clear attempt from any hon. Member to define the duties and functions of these mobile columns. I pointed out in the last debate we had that if H-bombs were dropped in the same way as our bombs and atomic bombs have been exploded in the Pacific, the places where they dropped would be radioactive. Are we to send mobile columns into radioactive places?
I do not know whether hon. Members have read the reports of the injuries that were inflicted on the Japanese fishermen who were hurt by radioactive dust, though they were miles and miles from the place of explosion—much farther from it than Epsom is from London. Not only London but, presumably, Epsom, too, would be covered by radioactive dust if a hydrogen bomb were dropped on London. We have not heard about that problem in these debates of ours. All that we know is that there are to be mobile columns, which, for all practical purposes, will be immobile.
This is a farce of a Bill. It is not an attempt to face up to the situation, because the problem is beyond human solution. We should be far better employed thinking out again the terms of our policy which has resulted in the country being in so much danger. If the emergency arises, and the people of the country look at the problem with any sense of realism, they will demand not only a strong Civil Defence force but a change in our military and foreign policies.

5.1 p.m.

Mr. Ede: One of the disadvantages which the House has suffered in the debates throughout the Bill has been the curious series of understatements made by the Home Secretary about the Bill. This is not a failing in the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's family, but there is no 9d. for 4d. in his presentation of the proposition to us.
I welcomed the Bill from the first because it establishes that Civil Defence is part of the responsibility of the Home Forces, and that it is part of their duty to perform it when called upon and to undergo training for it. Although the Government tell us that these powers will be used only in respect of the Royal Air Force men who have been referred to throughout the discussions, the Bill applies to every person in the Forces and makes them liable to perform, and to have training in, every form of Civil Defence. That is a very substantial achievement on the part of the Home Secretary.
We can now have the men. We can have as many men as the House thinks appropriate. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) that, as we have the power to get the men, the points which he raised consist in the main of administrative action to be taken by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman and the Service Ministers after they have the men. Once the men are there, the way they are to be used, organised and trained is a matter of administration about which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will not have to come back to the House.
For instance, the House does not lay down the way in which R.E.M.E., which used to be part of the Royal Engineers, shall be organised; it is a matter for the Service chiefs. On the Service Estimates, the Minister in charge usually explains the new training which is being, or has been, given, and hon. Members, with greater or lesser knowledge, express their praise or criticism. I imagine that that will be what will happen from year to year when we have a Civil Defence discussion in the House. It will be one of the responsibilities of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to explain to the House how the Bill is used when it becomes an Act.
I hope that the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East will be borne in mind by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. While, if I had been a member of the Coventry Council, I do not think I could have taken the line which those councillors did, frankly, I nevertheless believe that they have performed a public service in drawing the attention of the country to the fact that up to the present any talk of Civil Defence does not measure up to what we all know will be demanded if the emergency should arise.
I agree that the scheme which has been presented to us as being within the scope of the Bill is within the scope of the Bill, for the greater must include the lesser, but I believe that it will measure up quite inadequately to what is necessary. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East that we must have some mobile columns standing by in time of peace, for after Pearl Harbour nobody expects to get six months' notice of when the first bomb is to be dropped.
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman did not have the responsibility of framing the Bill, for he found it in the Home Office when he got there. The person who was to have defended it has gone to the place from which the Bill came, and he will there have to defend the Amendments which his right hon. and gallant Friend has made. In the circumstances, I consider that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman could have been more outspoken to the House about the exact powers that he has taken, for I hope he will not deny that they are very great powers indeed, their effect being that the Government can call on any member of the Armed Forces to participate in this Service.
What I have said about the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East applies also to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer). The hon. and gallant Member got into trouble about what he said about the fire service because he was replying to something which I had said and was trying to expand it.
I had urged that the men should be trained in fire-fighting and rescue work. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said that training in fire-fighting is not of much use unless one can get the fire-fighters

to the scene of the conflagration; and, therefore, as it is likely that some of the attacks will be delivered at night, it is desirable that the men who are to be the drivers should be trained for driving in the dark. To go a little further, they should be trained in the conditions of the black-out, which one may assume will be in operation at the time.
That, again, is a question of the use which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman makes of the Bill when it becomes an Act. There is no need to put into this Bill or any other Bill that members of the Civil Defence force shall be trained in travelling by night. One assumes that that is part of the ordinary training that the men will undergo.
I regret very much that the Government have tried to write down the Bill in the House. I recollect that when Sir John Anderson, as he then was, spoke about the Beveridge Report, his speech produced a feeling of alarm and despondency among my hon. Friends who were then in the House because he wrote it down so much. A colleague of mine in the Coalition Government said to me, "What a pity David Lloyd George did not have to explain the scheme to the House, because he would have persuaded us that he was giving something far more than Beveridge ever dreamt of."
I regret that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has adopted the English method of understatement in his presentation of the Bill to the House. There is enough in the Bill, if it is really analysed and understood, to justify our feeling that he has to some extent stolen a march on some of the other Departments which are involved. We have here, at any rate, a claim staked out, which this House, as I am quite sure he will feel, regards as a claim that it must in no circumstances surrender.
In the negotiations which will go on, after this Bill has been passed, inside the Government in the elaboration of the scheme on defence, which we understand we shall hear about early in the New Year, we expect the full impact of this Bill on the situation to be given full attention by every one of the Departments; and we expect to find Civil Defence occupying, both in men and money, a far bigger place in the defence arrangements of this country than it has hitherto done.

5.11 p.m.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: Hon. Members have given general support to this Bill with one exception, that being the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes)?"] I was not quite certain what that hon. Member's views were about the Bill because he spoke of Lord Montgomery and other matters. But the hon. Member for Coventry, East was opposed to the Bill, and he honoured me personally with so much abuse that I thought for a moment that I must be sitting on the Front Bench opposite.
The way in which he put his case—and I think that he will agree with my short paraphrasing of it—was to say, what is the use of this Measure or any Measure of this kind in the present situation?

Mr. Crossman: No. I asked for information on two points. One, what is the good of a mobile column which is only activated after the H-bomb has fallen; and, two, what is the good of a Home Secretary and Joint Under-Secretary content to take odd bits of military labour for which the Services cannot find any use? These are the two questions which I asked.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: So far as this Third Reading of the Bill is concerned, I think that it is fair to say that he asked, "What is the use of this Bill?" I think it is fair to put a question to him and to others who may be persuaded by his oratory that there may be something in his argument. It is, what is the alternative that he wishes to see? There are really only two possible alternatives. One is that it is no use doing anything at all, and the other is that we should have in peace-time a permanent army of standing mobile columns of adequate numbers able to deal with the kind of situation which is envisaged in the event of war.
These are the two alternatives, and if he makes any sort of calculation as to the kind of numbers involved and the cost of maintaining such an army, I think that he will agree—and I am certain that the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will agree—that would be out of the question at the present time.

Mr. Crossman: We have now had a clear statement from the Joint Under-Secretary that any adequate form of Civil Defence is ruled out on the grounds of expense. What he said is that we can spend £150 million on the Army, Navy and Air Force, but there is not enough money left for the protection of civilians. I did not think that he would be quite such a fool as to say that.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: Is the hon. Gentleman then proposing a standing army of Civil Defence of the size necessary to deal completely with the sort of situation he envisaged? I say that if that is the alternative he is proposing to this Measure, he had better argue it on its merits, because I think that the case he was putting to us was that, it being out of the question, the only course was to do nothing.
This Bill is only the first step towards constituting a defence reserve of mobile forces earmarked and trained so as to be immediately available in the event of emergency. That is what this Bill is; it is nothing more or less than that.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Available to do what?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields, in the course of his speech, said quite rightly that the Bill would not preclude further development, and I entirely agree with that.
This Bill is nothing more than a first step. It, therefore, does not preclude further development which will certainly take place, and in all probability the right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that that would probably be a matter of administration rather than of further legislation. That is for the future.

Mr. Bellenger: Would that include, for example, an increase in the number of mobile columns in peace-time?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: Certainly, of course it could.
The hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) sought, in the course of his speech, to damn this Measure with faint praise. I think that it is fair to say that he really succeeded in praising it with some faint damns. I agree on the whole


with the constructive points which he made. In particular, he argued that the Bill does not mean that the importance of the part which local authorities must play in Civil Defence is in any way diminished. I thought that was a most important point.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) asked about the Home Guard. I can tell him that the arrangements concerning the Home Guard are, strictly speaking, outside the purview of this Bill, but perhaps I may be allowed to say that arrangements have been made for the Home Guard to be given some training in Civil Defence, so that they may give effective assistance to Civil Defence authorities if they are called upon to do so in war.
Eventually this training will be given by Home Guard instructors who have qualified as Civil Defence instructors. Meanwhile, it can most conveniently be given by Civil Defence Corps authorities. Circulars will shortly be sent asking them to train members of the Home Guard, if they are asked to do so by local commands.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think that if this point is developed we shall be starting another debate altogether.

Mr. Ede: Do I understand that the hon. Gentleman is trying to prove that the Home Guard are not members of the Armed Forces, because if they are members of the Armed Forces then clearly they come within the Bill. That was the point raised by my right hon. Friend and by the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brig. Prior-Palmer). Surely it would be a very dangerous proposition to suggest that they are not members of the Armed Forces because, if they are not, what becomes of them in action should there be an enemy landing.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: What I said was that these arrangements are already in existence and, therefore, are outside this Bill. It is not necessary to use this Bill for the purpose of giving this training. For that reason I hope I might be in order to explain, in reply to the right hon. Gentleman, that it is not necessary to take action under the Bill in order to give the Home Guard the training which he wishes it to receive.
In the course of the debate we have had a great deal of constructive criticism. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Ian Harvey) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Worthing have all spoken about the scheme for which this Bill gives the necessary powers. The points that they made are matters which will certainly be borne in mind when we come to use the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields indicated that these are matters rather of the use that is made of the Bill than of the actual content of the Bill. I can assure those hon. Members who have made these suggestions that they will certainly be borne in mind. I hope that the House will give the Bill a unanimous Third Reading.

5.21 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Hale: This Bill is the classical legislative example of lighting a farthing candle in Dover to illuminate the cliffs of Calais. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) said that the policy of the Opposition was fiat lux and that as this was lucus a non lucendo it should not be wantonly legislatively snuffed. I do not dissent from that as an academic argument, and in so far as it represents the policy of the Opposition I am not here to raise any dissent.
But it is well to remember that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) put forward a somewhat different argument. He said that this was a small but important Bill, that because it was a very small one it must not be criticised by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) because he knew that though it was small something bigger was coming. He was then interrupted because he developed the point about the mobile columns, with which everyone agrees. I do not think that anyone dissents from the proposition that mobility will be necessary when towns are laid flat.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman was interrupted because we wished to ask him whether he realised that the columns would not be mobile until some time after the war started and until some time after our great towns were flattened. He then said that we must realise that that must be the case under this Bill because we


must wait until a committee has reported. I interrupted to ask him what committee, and he replied that I could not have read the debate on Second Reading or else I would have known that an expert committee was now considering Civil Defence at great speed, that it was covering the whole ground and that it would report very soon.
I then referred to the remarks of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Home Secretary to see what he did say. What he said was that a committee was considering the question of defence, that is, defence relating to the Army, Air Force and all the Fighting Services. That, he coyly pointed out, includes Civil Defence. One thing we got last week from the organs of dissemination of Sabbatarian opinion whose influence is so great is that the Minister of Defence, who has just entered on his new office, is to slash the Defence Estimates. We are told that he is able to forecast large reductions in general expenditure.
If this be so, what is happening about the committee which is dealing with Civil Defence, because it is right to say at once that the facts with which such a committee will have to contend are known. They are no longer in dispute. It may be a question of whether the area of damage is 10, 12, or 13 miles radius, but everyone knows that we are confronted with weapons of such calamitous and destructive power that they dwarf almost every other consideration, and we are discussing a matter of such importance that all other questions pale into insignificance by the side of it.
The levity of the Under-Secretary of State in these circumstances is something to be very much regretted. This is not a matter for frivolous comment or for party riposte. It is a matter of predominant consideration by what the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister would call the great palladium of the nation or for the council of the nation sitting as a Council of State and acting as a great driving force in regard to these serious matters.
The facts have been published. The American atomic scientists' journal recently published a well-informed article by Professor Hornell-Hart, of Duke University, who is a well-known and

respected scientist of outstanding ability. What he said in terms of the United States was that, taking a careful survey of Russian stockpiles—and how he knows that I do not know—but apparently the system of espionage referred to as Russian is not a one-way system but a bilateral operation—and Russian weapons, he estimated that an all-out attack by Russia on 25 of the largest American cities—assuming them as the likely targets—would result in the first series of attacks in 9 million dead and 11 million injured. Professor Hornell-Hart argued, not unreasonably, that that would largely cripple the United States war effort.
Others replied that 9 million dead and 11 million injured would not affect the mobile striking force. We are told that there would be a mobile striking force able to impose similar casualties on the Russians. No one can say what it will do or what will be the result of that operation or what would be the result to the brotherhood of man or to the comradeship of peoples or to the art of living in the world.

Mr. Bellenger: Has not the thought occurred to my hon. Friend that this modern professor might have made a mistake? Does my hon. Friend recollect that before the outbreak of the last war the official estimate made about the terrible casualties proved untrue, and that they never happened?

Mr. Hale: That is a point of view, but would my right hon. Friend not agree that some of the people who did not survive the last war are in a distant Elysium, thinking that the casualties were great. I am addressing the House not in terms of thinking of individuals as Englishmen, but as individuals. The last war resulted in how many casualties, 25 million, 30 million or 40 million? Let us remember how many there were in the concentrated area attacked by one atomic bomb. Over 100,000 people were killed at Hiroshima by a bomb the weight of which and the explosive power of which was measured in kilotons or thousands of tons of T.N.T., while now we talk about megatons or a thousand times as great. The bomb which was exploded at the Marshall Islands was one thousand times as powerful as the bomb which fell on Hiroshima.
These are the facts that we are considering in the terms of the Third Reading of this Bill. One single bomb like that exploded in the Marshall Islands would, if dropped at Charing Cross, wipe out almost every house and every building, including all the historic buildings, within a radius of 10 or 11 miles and would exterminate, at a rough estimate, two or three million people, would destroy every main line station in London and miles of rails. There would be no question about transport then, because there would be none. It would destroy every hospital in London of any importance and virtually every doctor and nurse. That would be the result of the first hydrogen bomb which got through our defences and was accurately dropped.
We do not know the rest. Probably the Thames would change its course. Certainly, there would be the jab of collecting two million corpses, the job of preventing looting among the few survivors, the job of stemming the fires, and in view of such a stupendous task no one would wish to criticise any Minister who would come to this House and would say, "This is precisely what we are going to do and this precisely what we are not going to do."
But there is one other matter which bears directly on this Bill which is relevant and important. Already, my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) has alluded to it. I was born into a world in which people were worried about individuals. I was born into a world in which it was thought that wars were matters for soldiers and fought by soldiers.

Sir William Darling: A Tory world.

Mr. Hale: Indeed, it was a Liberal world. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Sir W. Darling) was in a great difficulty in those days, because in the Tory world he was a member of the I.L.P.
I remember, at least, the shocked horror with which we thought of a policy of exterminating civilians. We thought that to kill off civilians was one of the war crimes of the worst type. It is not my wish to criticise anything that happened in the last war—people had to take responsibility, and I did not have to take it; I know it is easy to be wise afterwards—but it is well to remember that,

in the terms of General Gruenther, it is the policy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the moment it has come to the conclusion that an act of war has been committed, be it the shooting down of an aeroplane in China or over the China Sea, the sinking of a ship or the crossing of a frontier, to try at once to slaughter as many men, women and children in the hostile country as we can as soon as we can.
If that be the policy of any party to which I belonged, at once I should cease to belong to it. That is a policy which I cannot tolerate and which I must oppose. It is much easier to say these things in the modern world than it is to find the answers. We ought to renounce the hydrogen bomb. I would renounce it unilaterally if necessary, but, first, I should try to get agreement, which would be difficult. I never understand the arguments for not trying to get agreement, or the arguments why we do not go and see people. I am shocked when we hear——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: We are going rather beyond the Third Reading of the Bill. We can deal only with what is in the Bill.

Mr. Hale: I do not want to widen the argument or on a serious matter like this —or in any matter even—to find myself in argument with the Chair. Therefore, I shall try carefully to keep myself within the ambit of the Bill.
Let us look at the Bill in terms of Lancashire. One of the propositions in the Bill is that a Civil Defence station should be established at Chorley. There is nothing wrong with Chorley——

Major Lloyd-George: The hon. Member makes the same mistake as was made by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). These are training centres.

Mr. Hale: I am sorry, and I apologise; the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is quite correct.
I certainly took that as meaning that the immediate headquarters could be regarded as being there for Lancashire. Indeed, I should not dissent from the point of view that Chorley was reasonably central and that if for the moment there is to be only one mobile column for Lancashire, Chorley might have


advantages to be considered; I am not raising a geographical point.
But if one looks at industrial Lancashire and considers the possibility of a bomb attack upon it, it is quite obvious that it would be a widespread attack. In these modern days no one would send 10 or a dozen planes to attack Oldham or Manchester alone; it would be an attack on industrial Lancashire as a whole. The consideration of what can and cannot be done under this Bill is appalling.
The Joint Under-Secretary said something that I found very difficult to understand. He said that we could not have Civil Defence officers standing by in peace-time doing nothing. We have asked Question after Question in the House about men in uniform standing by and doing nothing during the three years of the present Government. Thousands of them are standing by doing nothing. Butchers are called up to "butch," musicians are called up to play, and so on. Never has there been such a waste of manpower.
Has this argument ever been applied before to any operation in history? Has it ever been said of the Navy that we cannot have ships standing by doing nothing, that we cannot have the Navy patrolling the seas, we cannot have boats that can be adapted for service later as hospital ships, we cannot have material that can be used only in war, and that we must wait until war comes before we start? Is it only in the sense of protecting our own people that we cannot do that?
The Joint Under-Secretary went further in letting this unsavoury cat out of the bag. He said that we all know we cannot afford Civil Defence and that this is a question of money. We all know that we can pay people to kill but we cannot pay enough to save life. But, of course, that is Government policy in relation to the International Children's Fund and in relation to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. We can spend money on arms, but we cannot spend it on saving life.
Let us look at it in terms of Lancashire. In Oldham, there is a first-class Civil Defence organisation under a first-class Civil Defence officer, so far as we can have a first-class Civil Defence

organisation. What is it to do? From whom does its (AGM take his orders? What is its area of operation? Who takes over in the case of an emergency in Lancashire? Who directs the mobile forces, and where do they go? What happens to the Civil Defence organisation in Oldham if there is an alert in Blackburn and damage is done? We have tried to find out, and the whole thing is in a state of suspended animation.
I dissent from only one word of what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) said. Had I been a member of the Coventry City Corporation, I should have acted as that Corporation did. I do not oppose participation in Civil Defence. To train a man who saves a single life is worth while, and any of us who can help to save life will be doing a job which is worth while; I am sure that that was in the minds of the Coventry City Council. But what that Council did was to call attention in a way that no other action could have done to a grave public problem and to grave public concern. Indeed, it has had its effect on the Floor of the House, because certain measures have been taken. As the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) said, it is a very small baby, but it is a baby and it shows at least some interest in the matter by the Government.
No one wishes to be discourteous to the Home Secretary in the first days of his now office, because he enjoys the respect of the House and we wish him well. No one wants to be fractious over a problem that is essentially the most difficult problem that any Minister has had to tackle. No one dissents from the view that the bill for a really effective and full Civil Defence might prove so wholly exorbitant that we could not carry it out. If we try to construct deep bombproof shelters for the whole population we are embarking on an operation which would mean giving up all other building operations and going on, probably, until any thoughts of war had gone.
But I am still wondering about a few things. I should have thought that the cost of a journey to Moscow might be worth while and that when we are talking in terms of £100 million, a journey over there might be well spent.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): This is a little beyond the Third Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Hale: The only point I was making was that the consideration for voting for or against the Bill tonight arises to an extent on whether the Government are serious in their attempt to remove the necessity for Civil Defence and to remove the necessity for further expenditure upon Civil Defence. However, I do not want to elaborate the point or to come into conflict with the Chair, and I return, in conclusion, to the main point.
The British public have shown through the years, and particularly in times of danger and difficulty, that the best way of dealing with them is to trust them with the facts. The British public have shown, particularly during the last war, in the days of bombing, that they can be trusted, and trusted much more if they know the facts, if they know what they have to face and if they know what are their hopes and what should be their fears. The frivolous attitude of the Joint Under-Secretary today is one to be deeply regretted in the light of the magnitude of the matter that we are discussing.
Tell the public the facts. Tell them what the hydrogen bomb means. Tell them what is the state of the modern world. Tell them of the utter helplessness of politicians in the face of this menace, and tell them that we are sitting here in a state of almost mental decay because none of us can grapple with the problem. Tell them that in the militarists' world we have now reached the inevitable end of militarism. Tell them we have come to the position when the whole of the arguments have gone by the board. Tell them there is no answer to this menace. Tell them they have got to take their chance of survival in antagonism or pin their hopes on a solution by peace.
If we do that, we shall not need Civil Defence. I believe that if we gave a lead in that direction, there might be hopes of an answer in terms of the thesis which we on this side represent, the thesis of human understanding and world brotherhood.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I had not intended to delay the House in the consideration of the question of whether or not we shall give a

Third Reading to this Bill, and I hope not to delay it for more than a few minutes now. I would not have delayed it at all but for two statements made by the Joint Under-Secretary of State in his final speech for the Government. One was that everybody in the House was in favour of this Bill except my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), and the other was his statement in which he appeared to be saying that we could not properly tackle the problem of Civil Defence because we could not financially afford to do so.
I should like to make it perfectly clear that I am against the Bill because, at best, it is a farce and at the worst a fraud. Before the Bill was introduced, the country had no adequate Civil Defence. If, after the Bill becomes an Act, no more is done than is contemplated by its provisions, the country will still have no adequate Civil Defence, and I, as a humble Member of this House, would refuse to take part in any conspiracy to deceive the public into believing that something was being done by the Bill to give them the Civil Defence which we all know that they will not get without it and which they will not get with the Bill either.
Had the Government come along and outlined their ideas for defending the civilian population in the event of a war in which hydrogen bombs were used, and if they had asked the House to give a Third Reading to the Bill at this stage against the background of a constructive policy of much wider scope with which they proposed to deal with the whole problem, that would have been a totally different factor. But they have done nothing of the kind, and I think it is a fair inference to draw from their silence —I know it is only an inference, but I think it is a fair inference—that they have no plans at all for Civil Defence. If they have, I hope that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who is responsible—not the Joint Under-Secretary—will tell us so before the House parts with the Bill.
Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman agree with the Joint Under-Secretary that it would be possible to have a system of Civil Defence if only we were willing to spend enough money on it? Does he agree with the further statement that we have not got it only because we cannot afford it? Will he tell us what plans


there ought to be, what they would cost and why we cannot afford them? Is the country not to be told anything about this, or are we to understand from the silence of the Government that they have no plans at all?
If they have no plans at all, then one would want to know why. They are not irresponsible persons, and they are not inhumane persons. Whatever one may think about their politics, and however we may differ in our approach to political, social and economic questions, or to problems of international affairs, no one supposes that they would willingly leave the civilian population of this country as defenceless as the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki if they were able to afford them any defence.
It is, therefore, reasonable to infer that they do not believe that such defence is at all possible. If that is so, are they going to say it, or were they intending this Bill to be some kind of answer to the protestation in which the Coventry City Council expressed what is the overwhelming opinion of most civilians in this country? Do they believe it possible to do anything at all to defend the civilian population? If they do, will they tell us what it is? If they do not, will they tell us what bearing that will have upon their policy generally, either in defence or in foreign affairs, or are they like a former Conservative Prime Minister of whom the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's father once said that he was continually stumbling across a great truth and then picking himself up and going on as if nothing had happened?

Sir W. Darling: The hon. Gentleman does not appear to be doing justice to the Bill. He is asking for a general statement about policy. Did he read or hear the opening remarks made by my right hon. and gallant Friend on Second Reading? On that occasion, my right hon. and gallant Friend said:
This Bill provides the necessary legislative authority for the training by the Home and Health Departments of certain National Service reservists with a view to their mobilisation in time of war as members of Civil Defence mobile columns."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 2159.]
We are not discussing the general policy of defence.

Mr. Silverman: I am gratified that the hon. Gentleman has so effectively and with such facility seized the point that I am endeavouring to make. I thought that I had made it quite clear in my first sentence that my objection to the Bill was precisely because it was not offered to us as a single part, however small, of a general scheme dealing with civilian defence. That is why I am on my feet, and that is the only reason I am making this speech. I am glad that for the first time in our joint Parliamentary careers the hon. Gentleman has succeeded in understanding what it is that I am trying to say. I hope, therefore, that I shall have his continued attention during the few minutes left to me.

Sir W. Darling: What the hon. Gentleman has just said is correct. He is out of order in discussing civilian defence on this specific Bill.

Mr. Silverman: The hon. Gentleman is not so intelligent in understanding what I wish to say. It is perfectly in order on Third Reading to say, of a particular policy advanced in a Bill—subject, of course, to the Ruling of the Chair—that it is insufficient to deal with the job with which it purports to deal. It is quite true that this Bill purports to deal with only one tiny section of Civil Defence. That would not be an objection to it if, in my opinion, it were clear what part it played in a general, effective, adequate system of Civil Defence. I take it as a perfectly valid reason for opposing the Third Reading of the Bill that it does not form part of any such thing, and is, therefore, completely ineffective to achieve anything that the House wishes to achieve.
That is precisely the point that I was making. I was saying that one must presume from the complete silence of the Government on this point that they have no idea how the people could be defended in the event of a war in which hydrogen bombs were used. If that is wrong, perhaps they will take an early opportunity of telling us what their policy is, how it may be done and how they propose to do it.
So far, all that we have heard is a statement by the Joint Under-Secretary that we cannot do it at all, and that if we could we cannot afford it. If the hon. Gentleman knows of any other Government statement on the matter, I will


willingly give way, because I would not willingly be wrong. The reason why they know quite well that the people cannot be defended is that they understand some of the elemental facts of geography.
It is just possible that the Soviet Union, with its vast expanse of territory, might survive a hydrogen war. It is just possible that the United States, with its vast expanse of territory, might survive the hydrogen war. Does any hon. or right hon. Member think that this small island, with its 50 million densely crowded population, could survive a hydrogen war? Nobody in his senses believes it, and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) was perfectly right in saying that it is the duty of the Government and of every hon. and right hon. Member not to falter with the matter and to let the people know the truth.
There is no defence for the civilian population of Britain in a hydrogen war, and the Government know it perfectly well. That is why they have not told us their plans. If the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Sir W. Darling) wants to know why the Government have put forward this Bill I can tell him. One has only to go back to the last White Paper on Defence to see exactly what the Government had in mind.
That White Paper was not written on the basis that the nation could survive a hydrogen war. It was written on the basis that, somehow or other, after the first attacks, with their catastrophic results and their nation-wide devastation, it might be possible to salvage a little installation here, a piece of machinery somewhere else, a small handful of individuals in some other place, in order to continue what the Government describe as "broken-back" war. The purpose of the Bill is to try to keep unaffected by that devastation and trained in advance a small number of people, not at all for the purpose of defending a civilian population, which by that time will be largely wiped out, but for the

purpose of carrying on in this broken-back way some kind of military activity.
If that is what their Bill is about, if we are to have the training of a handful of reserves over a great number of years, if that is really all that the Government have to say in the context of the imminent catastrophe, they really must be undeceived when they say that it is only my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East who is against it and will have nothing to do with it.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.

PESTS [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision with respect to the destruction or control of rabbits and other animals and birds, it is expedient—

(a) to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of expenses of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries or of the Secretary of State—

(i) in exercising default powers conferred on those Ministers by the Act;
(ii) in providing services, equipment, appliances or other material for the purpose of assisting in measures for the destruction or control of rabbits;
(iii) in making contributions towards expenses incurred or to be incurred by any person in taking any such measures or other measures for killing, taking or destroying animals or birds to which section ninety-eight of the Agriculture Act, 1947, or section thirty-nine of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act, 1948, applies;
and of any administrative expenses incurred for the purposes of the Act of the present Session by either of those Ministers;
(b) to authorise the payment into the Exchequer of sums recovered by or on behalf of either of those Ministers on account of expenses incurred in the exercise of any such default powers, or by way of charges made for providing services, equipment, appliances and other materials as aforesaid.
Resolution agreed to.

PESTS BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir RHYS HOPKIN MORRIS in the Chair]

Clause 1.—(RABBIT CLEARANCE AREAS.)

Amendments made: In page 3, line 4, at beginning, insert "Section one hundred and."

In page 4, line 8, after "thirty-nine," insert "forty-one."—[Mr. Amory.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2.—(EXTENSION OF POWER TO REQUIRE OR ASSIST IN PREVENTIVE MEASURES.)

5.57 p.m.

The Deputy-Chairman: It may be for the convenience of the Committee to discuss the two Amendments in the name of the hon. Baronet the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) to Clause 2 with his further two Amendments to the Amendment in the name of the Minister, to insert a new subsection (2) in the Clause, together with that Amendment.

Sir Richard Acland: I beg to move, in page 4, line 24, after "destroy," to insert "or fill up."
I agree, Sir Rhys, that it would be for the convenience of the Committee if, as you suggest, we take with this Amendment my Amendment in page 4, line 25, after "places," insert "or warrens," and also my two Amendments in line 7, after "destroying," insert "or filling up."; and after "places," insert "or warrens." to the Minister's proposed Amendment. That Amendment reads: In page 4, line 46, at end, insert:
(2) The purposes for which the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries or the Secretary of State may exercise his powers under section one hundred and one of the Agriculture Act, 1947, or section forty-two of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act, 1948 (under which he may provide services, equipment, etc. for the purpose of assisting in the destruction of pests), shall include the rendering of assistance in destroying or reducing breeding places or cover for rabbits or in excluding rabbits therefrom, or in preventing the rabbits living in any place from spreading to or doing damage in any other place.
The first two of my Amendments would make the Clause read:
…to destroy or fill up or reduce the breeding places or warrens or cover for rabbits…

The other two would make the new subsection (2) read:
…assistance in destroying or filling up or reducing breeding places or warrens…
I am sorry that such trivial shelters should be mentioned so soon after the House has been considering the possible effect of the hydrogen bomb, but that is how things go. I am indebted for the fact that I am moving my Amendment to a friend of mine, a Mr. A. E. Farr, of Hereford, a most observant countryman who was once a Liberal candidate in a constituency in the southern part of the country. It was a great loss to the House of Commons that he was not elected. He demonstrated during the 1930s, to my satisfaction at any rate, the point which I am about to put to the Committee. If I had spent a little more time on research in back numbers of HANSARD I should have found the occasions when I drew the attention of the House of Commons to the matter.
Mr. Farr found that if any occupier of land is so diligent as to wipe out all the rabbits on his land by any means, whether trapping, shooting, or gassing, or if they are destroyed as in these days by the spread of myxomatosis, thereafter the rabbits living on neighbouring land do not come into the land from which they have been eliminated to eat the lush pastures. However flourishing the crops may be, the rabbits are not tempted over the boundary to eat the crops. On the contrary, they go to live in the warrens which have been left untouched by neighbours of the hypothetical landowner. I had no idea that this was so until Mr. Farr drew it to my attention.
On his small farm in Herefordshire he had filled up all the rabbit warrens on his 150 to 250 acres of land. He had a cement mixer and he mixed earth with one-thirtieth part of cement and sufficient water to make a runnable paste, which he poured down the rabbits warrens. Incidentally, subsequent experiments suggested that even the presence of cement in small quantities was not necessary and that if one filled up the holes with mud the effect would be the same.
On a beautiful warm evening in September, with the sun going down in the west, just the sort of evening when one expects to see hundreds of these rabbits running about, he took me round the


farm. Sure enough, on everybody else's farms all round we could see rabbits in hundreds. On the first 25 or 50 yards inside his boundaries we could see some marks and some evidence that rabbits had been there, but in the central part of this small farm there was not a rabbit and not a trace of one. It appeared to me that the success of this experiment was proved.
It is certain that a rabbit warren is by no means something which can be constructed in a night, as one might hope a prefabricated house might be. A rabbit warren is the work of a century and rabbits live in it generation after generation. If a system of rabbit warren is left empty in March by the enterprise of a man who kills all the rabbits living there, by April another lot of rabbits will have come over the boundary to live in those warrens. If the warrens are filled up the rabbits will not come. In any major clearance operation over a large area I feel sure that the filling up of warrens would be one of the major instruments for the offensive against rabbits.
6.0 p.m.
The Minister may think that all I have said so far is fully covered by the words already in the Bill. The words already say that he may serve notices on people about reducing the rabbits' breeding places. It may be thought by a layman that a breeding place would include a rabbit warren, but I think that that is not so. The process of breeding rabbits involves two critical acts, which are separated from each other by the period of gestation. Those acts are conception and delivery.
Delivery does not take place in a rabbit warren. The doe rabbit makes a tiny scrape in a hedge, almost anywhere, into which the baby rabbits are born and in that place she keeps them until they are big enough to fend for themselves. Then, in a few days, she introduces them to the other rabbits in the warren. The owner might keep watch for the female rabbit making little scrapes and fill them up, but the rabbits would be born somewhere as the doe would always find another place.
As for the act of breeding, conception, I understand, takes place in the fields. I am sure the Minister does not want to destroy the fields. Therefore, I do not

feel that the filling up of warrens is covered by the words in the Bill. The words I am proposing cannot do any harm. They would give the Minister great liberty of action. I understand that officers of the Ministry are making some tests about Mr. Farr's claims and may report favourably. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to accept my Amendment.

The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (Mr. Heathcoat Amory): The hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) has given us a most interesting account of a hovel method of attacking breeding places and also interesting information about the life of rabbits. He wrote to me about the interesting method employed by Mr. Farr, of making a weak mixture of soil, water and cement and pouring it into the burrows. One of my scientific officers had a talk with Mr. Farr about it, but on the report he has made to me I am still a little sceptical about how successful it would be. Many of these burrows are exceedingly difficult to deal with—I sometimes wonder whether a hydrogen bomb dropped on one of them would be successful.
However, I have referred this matter to our Land Pests Advisory Committee, which is to report upon it. I am advised that the Bill as drafted would enable such a method to be adopted if desired, as the word "place," appearing later, would cover the actual burrows as well as the site of the breeding place. I hope that, in these circumstances, the hon. Baronet will feel that his Amendments are not necessary to give effect to what he wants, to enable this novel method to be applied in cases where it is found suitable.

Sir R. Acland: The ward does not seem to be "place"—the words are "breeding places." I take it that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to line 25. It is true that the word "places" occurs there, but it is modified by the word "breeding." Those two words, surely, are to be taken together. Warrens are not breeding places because rabbits do not perform either of the essential acts of breeding in warrens. They perform one in the open and the other in a little temporary serape made by the doe.
I ask the Minister whether he has had legal advice on this matter. Is he really satisfied that he is entitled to read the word "places" without the word "breeding"? Would it not be safer to accept the Amendment in case of any doubt? It may be that he would be satisfied that this method is of en ormous importance and he may want to go in for it on a large scale. It would be very embarrassing to have to argue on a point of law if someone came forward and contested that "breeding places" included the filling of warrens.

Mr. Amory: In spite of what the hon. Baronet has said, I am satisfied that as the Bill is drafted it would permit this method to be followed. I will look into the matter again and if I have any reason to change my mind I will do something about it at a later stage, but I do not think I have any need to do so and the hon. Baronet may feel quite happy about the matter.

Amendment negatived.

Amendment proposed: In page 4, line 46, at end, insert:
(2) The purposes for which the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries or the Secretary of State may exercise his powers under section one hundred and one of the Agriculture Act, 1947, or section forty-two of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act. 1945 (under which he may provide services, equipment, etc. for the purpose of assisting in the destruction of pests), shall include the rendering of assistance in destroying or reducing breeding places or cover for rabbits or in excluding rabbits therefrom, or in preventing the rabbits living in any place from spreading to or doing damage in any other place.—[Mr. Amory.]

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: This Amendment has been moved formally, but I wonder whether, before we pass from it, the Minister would be good enough to enlighten us on one or two points? On Second Reading, I was one who expressed the view that it was not possible to exterminate the rabbit—which I understood to be the aim of the Government—unless a national drive were made. This Amendment goes a little way towards the point of view I then expressed. I can only hope that the power the Minister is taking by this Amendment will be used.
What precisely are the services and equipment the Minister has in mind as possibly providing for private occupiers La use in the drive against the rabbit?

Is he to provide them, for instance, with long nets, with gas, machines for pumping gas, with a pack of hounds for rabbits which never go to earth at all but live in scrub or in walls, or is he relying on the gin trap after all? Could the right hon. Gentleman answer those questions before we leave this Amendment?
Who are the people to be lent or provided by the Minister? Has he in mind the use of troops? Has he considered a suggestion made in some responsible quarters that good conduct prisoners in open prisons could help in this matter where other labour may be scarce? If he has considered that question, will he say whether it is not a fact that professional trappers are very often least successful in exterminating the rabbit? Does it not quite often happen that real "townees," with no knowledge of the country, when trained in this work are more successful than trappers who are real countrymen, but who cannot shed the belief that it is necessary to leave some rabbits behind to continue breeding? This, I believe, has been the experience in New Zealand. I wish to ask who the Minister proposes shall do this work for him, if he lends anyone or provides services to private occupiers in an attempt to exterminate the rabbits?

Sir Jocelyn Lucas: I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the most successful method of exterminating rabbits which is employed in New Zealand. There they make each district responsible for an area and the farmers pitch into the job and try to keep down the rabbits. They do not pay for rabbit skins, or anything of that kind, but they have found a successful way of using packs of dogs and chasing the rabbits into the ground. Then they fill up the rabbit holes. No money is paid for the rabbits. The only way to exterminate them is to drive everything below ground. The farmer who does not catch his own rabbits finds himself in trouble with his neighbours, who very often come and do the job for him.

Dr. Horace King: Will the hon. Member add to his interesting comments that the New Zealanders are doing this without the wilful spread of myxomatosis?

Sir J. Lucas: Yes.

Sir R. Acland: I was proposing, on the Question, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill" to raise the very points which have been raised on this Amendment about the extent of the operation which the Minister has in mind. Perhaps I may be permitted to continue the discussion now, instead of speaking later.
I am concerned to know what is the scale of the operation which the Minister has in mind. I was sorry to learn that an Amendment of mine, taking up the very interesting suggestion about the use of troops, is not to be selected. But perhaps I may say of that Amendment that in framing it I did not have anything of a trivial nature in mind, such as just a few "Tommies" shooting "bunnies." It seems to me that if we are seriously proposing to get rid of rabbits in this country—an enterprise which would be worth £40 million or £50 million a year—we are thinking of a field operation which is quite immense.
It is relatively easy for a skilful country trapper to trap a few rabbits, or for a skilful countryman to go out and shoot a few. But it is quite a different kind of operation to get rid of every last rabbit, and that is what we have to do; because if we leave half-a-dozen rabbits now, in 1955 we shall have half-a-dozen hundred; in 1956, there would be half-a-dozen million and in 1957 the whole job would have to be done over again. Therefore, if we are thinking of anything serious, we are thinking of a major field operation, and I wonder what sort of areas the Minister has in mind to declare as rabbit clearance areas.
I will mention a part of the country far removed from my own constituency, but it is near where I live and where the Minister lives, and he and I know it well, and it will serve as an illustration. Does he intend to apply the provisions of the Bill to the whole of Cornwall? That would be a convenient area to take, because, by stretching a barbed wire fence from the upper waters of the Tamar to the coast in the neighbourhood of Bude, it would be possible to cut off Cornwall from England. If we got rid of all the Cornish rabbits, the English rabbits would not be able to enter Cornwall. [Interruption.] I am sorry, I meant a strand of barbed wire along the top

of a stretch of wire netting. The barbed wire would be necessary to prevent animals from pushing it over.
6.15 p.m.
If the Minister is thinking of ridding such an area as Cornwall of its rabbit population, it would be an immense operation, involving interesting problems of transport and supply, and the maintaining of a corps of men in the field. The officers in charge of this great field operation—the result of which would, I suppose, be worth £750,000 a year to Cornwall if successful, and would, therefore, be well worth while—would need to show resourcefulness, powers of observation and liability to appreciate the country. All those are qualities highly valuable in an armed soldier in time of war.
They would need to be able to make an accurate assessment of the likely moves to be taken by their enemy. They would need to be agile mentally and physically in devising the appropriate counter-moves and counter-tactics to meet the strategy employed against them. They would need patience, and the men under their command would have to have a high morale and be ready to endure hardship; often remaining and maintaining themselves in the open far from their base in all sorts of weather for the purpose of carrying on this war.
Therefore, the Amendment of mine which has not been selected was very far from frivolous in its intent. I put it down, not only with a view to getting rid of rabbits, but also for the benefit of the Army. I would say, in all seriousness, that if the Army engaged in a major field operation against a real enemy they would have far more valuable training for the purposes of fighting the next war—if it ever happens—than they would derive from any amount of imaginary rehearsals and repetition of operations appropriate in the last war.
If we put down a similar Amendment on Report, I hope it may be considered as something of much more serious intent than the Amendment to which I have referred was apparently considered, when it was examined without the advantage of any explanation. However that may be, I hope that before we approve this Amendment the Minister will indicate the scale of operations which he has in mind.

Mr. E. G. Gooch: As a countryman, I appreciate the extent of the ravages of rabbits; but I think that the suggestions made here today—the Minister suggested using a hydrogen bomb to clear them out and my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) has suggested the use of troops—are too drastic. I believe that there is a simple way of ridding the country of rabbits; it is to alter the game laws.
The best rabbit catcher is the farm worker. If farm workers were given the opportunity to destroy what rabbits they could find, I guarantee that in time there would be very few rabbits left to eat the farmer's corn. I put this suggestion forward seriously. I consider it much preferable to the use of troops and hydrogen bombs. If we altered the game laws, it would give the farm workers an opportunity to get rid of the rabbits and to provide themselves with some useful food.

Mr. M. Philips Price: I support what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch) about farm workers and their ability to exterminate rabbits. I would add that some sensible farmers have already told their men to help themselves. I believe that this Amendment will give the Minister adequate powers to carry out a campaign against pests in a given locality, but will he have the means to carry out such a campaign? Some of the pests officers of the county agricultural committees are very good, and some are not particularly good; and sometimes even those who are good have inadequate funds with which to deal with the problems set before them.
In some districts it will be difficult for farmers to deal with pests unless they are given assistance. For instance, a farmer might need nets, if it were possible to use nets in the locality. Can equipment be loaned to him for the purpose by the Land Pests Advisory Committee? Can the Department make available equipment of any kind which may be necessary?

Sir Thomas Moore: I think the hon. Member will find that that point is covered in the new Clause (Extension of power to contribute to cost of destruction or preventive measures).

Mr. Price: That may be so.
We have spoken about rabbits, but the grey squirrel is an equally serious pest which often cannot be dealt with unless special equipment is available. In my experience, the best way of dealing with the grey squirrel is in the late winter or early spring, before the leaves come out, just when the does are dropping their young in the drains. One needs to push a long pole down the drain. If one has guns on each side of a tree, the operation is often successful. I cleared 18 grey squirrels from a small wood in half-an-hour last spring. It requires the right equipment, of course; and I should like to know whether such equipment will be loaned by the pests officers. Both competent officers and equipment are required in such cases.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: I want to support what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch). He suggested altering the game laws to permit poaching. In Lancashire, not many months ago, a bench of magistrates fined each of three men £20 for attempting to catch a single rabbit. Incidentally, they had not even caught the rabbit. An unlimited number of poachers would give their services free if we altered the game laws. It would not involve the country in any expense.

Mr. Clifford Kenyon: Will the Minister give an undertaking that, in the provision of services and equipment for the destruction of rabbits, he will not include the gin trap? It would be anomalous if the Ministry of Agriculture supplied gin traps to those who were destroying the rabbits when in the Bill we express the hope that the gin trap will be abolished. It would go some way towards helping the cause of the abolition of the gin trap if the Minister gave an undertaking that it would not be included in any equipment supplied to farmers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch) has taken the words out of my mouth in suggesting an alteration to the game laws. What is required is that rabbits shall be taken completely out of the protection of the game laws. I think that the Game Act of 1880 describes hares and rabbits as ground game. If that protection had been removed from rabbits so that anybody could catch them, I do not think


we should have our present trouble with rabbits.
Consider what the position will be. The purpose of the Bill is the destruction of all the rabbits in the country, yet there will still be in operation game laws which will protect the rabbits in places where the Minister has not introduced clearance areas. One Act will be working against another. I said on Second Reading that I did not think that the Bill would wipe out the rabbits, but, certainly, if the rabbits are to be protected by the game laws in places with which the Minister is not dealing under the Act, then the position will become hopeless.
I feel sure that one of the first effective steps which the Minister should take is to remove the protection of the game laws from the rabbits. I hope he will do so. I mentioned on Second Reading the case of the three men being fined £20 each. Following that, there was a case in which six men were fined £120 plus costs by the same bench for the same offence. That is ridiculous and nonsensical. I think that sort of thing has largely been stopped as a result of my intervention with the then Home Secretary, but it would be completely stopped if the protection of the game laws were removed from the rabbits.

Mr. Denys Bullard: I cannot follow the arguments of the hon. Members for Chorley (Mr. Kenyon) and Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch) on this point about the game laws, because it seems to me that under the Bill, within the rabbit clearance areas at all events, the responsibility for clearing rabbits is placed on the occupier of the land. If he wishes to do so he can invite people to help him destroy the rabbits.
In my opinion, the occupier of the land must be the person responsible for doing this job. An enormous area has to be covered, and to imagine that squads can cover the whole country is wrong thinking. I have had some experience of this suggestion that promiscuous invitations should be given to people to come and kill the rabbits. I am anxious to get rid of rabbits and there are plenty of people who will attempt to catch them. But there will be a good many people who will leave holes all over the grass fields, into which the cattle will slip, and the farmer will have the job of going round and filling in the holes. The

picture is not as simple as it has been painted, and I should not like the Committee to have the impression that we can get rid of the rabbit population simply by encouraging poaching.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): This little debate started with the query as to what services my right hon. Friend intended to provide in cases where farmers needed assistance. It has been widened by the inclusion of a number of queries which were broadly dealt with on Clause 1. I hope that I shall not be out of order if I briefly touch on them.
The general intention of the Bill is that the occupier shall continue to be responsible for killing his rabbits; and that must be the case. When we consider the number of farms with which we are dealing—hundreds of thousands—we must recognise that it is impossible for us to do more than make a small supplement in the way of additional services to help the farmer to do what is normally his own job of keeping under control and destroying his rabbits as far as he can.
The whole Bill is drafted on that basis, and I believe that we should be wrong if we were to shift far from it. We have asked our county committees to prepare for the Bill going on the Statute Book so that they will have the necessary resources to carry out our intentions in it. Their function will be primarily advisory in regard to clearance areas, in advising the occupiers of the land concerned on what is necessary to be done in those areas and in generally guiding them. We shall be able to provide services to some extent for those farmers who are not able to provide for themselves. At present, almost all the county committees operate a service for gassing, which will be more, or less universally available.
6.30 p.m.
We have also asked the county committees to see that, where farmers cannot do it themselves, or in the extreme cases where an order has been made and where the Minister has to take default action, they will be ready to operate their own trapping schemes. Most committees have small teams normally engaged in such operations as the catching of rats and mice, but doing a certain amount of rabbit catching as well, so that they will be available in extreme cases.
Our general approach to this matter is not to proceed by way of a great number of orders. Quite obviously, we should make very poor progress if that was so, and our idea is that the right way to proceed is with the maximum amount of co-operation from the farmers, the majority of whom are willing and anxious to co-operate. Our intention is to start in the most likely areas for clearance schemes, and to widen out the operations from these most likely areas into other areas, hoping gradually to join them up and cover substantial parts of the country.
The hon. Baronet the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) said that to exterminate the last rabbit was a colossal undertaking, and, while I hope we all live a long time, I think we should be extremely fortunate if we lived to see it.

Mr. Philips Price: We never shall.

Mr. Nugent: Well, that is a point of view.
In any event, this Bill is a constructive start on the task of making more possible than is the case under the 1947 Act the establishment of these clearance areas and making progress with the job. The 1947 Act has a defect that the Minister's grants can only apply to groups of farmers, and cannot apply to individuals. This Bill remedies that defect and makes this scheme a more practicable proposition.
That is the outline of our intentions, and, on the point about the use of troops, I may say that no further statutory provision is needed. The Armed Forces are willing and able to give us their assistance in emergencies such as harvesting, and so on, and, if a special emergency arises in which my right hon. Friend thought there was justification for it, he would call upon them for an exercise which I do not doubt would be very popularly received. Whether they will be called upon or not, I am not able to predict.
On the point made by the hon. Members for Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch) and Chorley (Mr. Kenyon) about the farm-worker taking part in this project, I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Bullard) gave the answer. In subsections (4) and (5) of Clause 1, we have taken the necessary

powers to widen the operation of the Ground Game Act so that, where the owner is not willing to co-operate, the Minister, where he is satisfied that it is necessary, can give permission for the use of additional guns so that the occupier may employ them. No doubt, in many cases, they will be only too glad of this assistance, because many farmers already encourage their workers to take part, and a very great help they are.
Broadly, that covers the main points raised in the discussion, and I hope that I have said enough to outline what our general intention is in regard to the additional powers for which my right hon. Friend is asking here. I hope I have indicated the lines on which we intend to proceed, and have shown that we have the necessary resources to proceed on those lines, and that the Committee will now agree to the Amendment.

Mr. Kenyon: The Minister has omitted any reference to my question about the gin trap.

Mr. Nugent: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. The position is that we have asked committees to use the Imbra as the general practice, and it is in general use now, but, in some areas the gin trap is still in use because the Imbra is not effective in those areas. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question, therefore, is that it is fairly general Practice to use the Imbra and not the gin trap, but that we cannot deprive ourselves of the use of the gin trap in those areas in which the Imbra is unworkable.

Mr. John Dugdale: Why is it possible to use the Imbra in some places and not in others? I understand that it is mainly a question of the unwillingness of some people to use it?

Mr. Nugent: No, it is not unwillingness. It is true that the Imbra is not as easy to use. It is more difficult to handle and its catching powers are not as good as those of the gin trap, but there are some places where it is not usable on account of its greater size. It requires a larger hole than the normal rabbit hole, and in rocky ground it is often impossible to enlarge the hole sufficiently to take the trap. In sandy places, any attempt to enlarge the hole might cause the collapse of the mouth and defeat the


object. Therefore, there are some places where that method cannot be used.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 4 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8.—(RESTRICTION ON TYPE OF TRAP IN ENGLAND AND WALES.)

Amendment made: In page 7, line 20, leave out from "after," to "either," in line 23, and insert "the appointed day." —[Mr. Amory.]

Mr. Amory: I beg to move, in page 8, line 10, at the end, to insert:
(6) The appointed day for the purposes of subsection (1) of this section shall be the thirty-first day of July, nineteen hundred and fifty-eight:
Provided that the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries—

(a) may by order appoint a day earlier than the said thirty-first day of July (but not earlier than two years after the date of the order); or
(b) if no order has been made under the foregoing paragraph, may from time to time by order postpone the appointed day for a period (or further period) of one year;
but no order shall be made under paragraph (b) of this proviso, unless a draft of it has been laid before Parliament two years or more before the day for the time being appointed and has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
We have gone to great trouble to find a sensible answer to the problem of how and when we can ban the gin trap. I believe that the Amendment provides the best way of doing what we all want to do, to get rid of the gin trap at the earliest practicable date. I know the strong aversion that almost every Member of the Committee has to the use of the gin trap. I have shared it myself for many years. Cruelty is involved in the use of the gin trap, and I do not think there is any difference between us in our wish to get rid of it as soon as we can.
We are all agreed that the rabbit is a very serious pest, and that we have to take every practicable step to eliminate it. We want to do that in the most humane possible way. The question we have to consider first is whether trapping is necessary at all. Some hon. Members feel that it is not, but all the advice and information I have been able to get on the matter fits in with my own

experience that in some places and at some times trapping is necessary. This is the background against which we have to consider the problem. In the present circumstances it would be a real loss if we had to proceed without trapping of any kind.
I think we agree that myxomatosis will not provide a complete answer because it will not kill all the rabbits. It will leave some. That fact should make us more determined to encourage the most active follow-up operation to get as near as possible to complete extermination. In the process of mopping up the remainder of the rabbits, we have to face the fact that trapping will have some part to play.
The Amendment fixes a date for abolishing the sale and use of all except approved traps. The date we have thought right to put into the Bill is 31st July, 1958. That date can only be postponed by order subject to affirmative Resolution, and if the order is introduced it can postpone the date only by one year at a time. Such a draft order must be laid before Parliament two years before the date on which the ban would otherwise become effective. That is to say, it will have to be laid before July, 1956. If no order is laid by that date, then 31st July, 1958, becomes an absolutely fixed date and cannot be changed at all.
An order can be laid by the Minister to fix a date earlier than July, 1958, if the development of humane traps takes place sooner than we at present think is likely, but it must be introduced at least two years before the earlier date which it proposes shall apply. That means that an order fixing an earlier date would have to be introduced before 31st July, 1955, and that the date would then become 31st July, 1957, instead of 1958. If such an order were approved, the date would become irrevocable.
6.45 p.m.
My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary gave the reasons on Second Reading why we thought that July, 1958, was the earliest possible date. We feel that at least two seasons are likely to be required for the experiments to develop an alternative trap or traps, and that a further two seasons are likely to be required for trial in the field, manufacture and distribution of the traps.
As hon. Gentlemen know, I have the advice of a Humane Traps Advisory Committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. Roland Dudley. I am pleased to see the energetic way in which that committee is tackling its very difficult problem, but we shall be lucky indeed if it is successful in finding a trap within the time I have mentioned. There is only a remote chance of developing one more quickly than that.
The committee has already a number of traps under examination. While some offer a prospect, some are, I am afraid, so humane that they do not catch rabbits at all. Some of them could not be more humane. That is one of the problems. Some of the proposed traps are of rather impracticable design and some are too high in cost to be economic in the circumstances. Even the date we suggest means accepting quite a considerable risk that when it comes there may not be available an effective alternative trap.
I shall not say any more than that at this stage. We have done our very best to reconcile the general wish to lose no time whatever in banning the gin trap, with the practical means and requirements of the situation. I hope that the Committee, after we have discussed the Amendments, will regard our proposal as a sincere attempt to meet the general wish of the House of Commons and as a practical solution to a difficult problem.

Mr. A. J. Champion: I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, to leave out "fifty-eight," and to insert "fifty-six."
The Minister has gone some way to meet us in the Amendment he has moved, but we cannot accept the date proposed in it. The point of this manuscript Amendment is to enable us to discuss the vital point of the date on which the banning of anything other than an improved trap will come into operation. The Minister has mentioned again today that there is general agreement in the House upon the principle of the abolition of the gin trap and its replacement by some more humane form of trap.
There is, therefore, no disagreement anywhere in the House on this point of abolishing the gin trap once and for all. The only point of difference that remains

between most hon. Members on this side of the Committee and the Minister is the question of the date. My hon. Friends and myself feel that a target date for the abolition of the gin trap should be set not in 1958 but at 31st July, 1956.
As I understand it, the case of the Government for 1958 was stated by the Minister during the Second Reading debate, when he said:
The Humane Traps Advisory Committee is hard at work on this problem, but I am afraid it is unrealistic to expect early results. In the Government's view we shall require at least two trapping seasons to develop and produce new traps and new designs, and then a further period will be required for manufacture and for trying them out in practice to enable farmers and trappers to have confidence in them and to become proficient. That is why we are satisfied that it is not practicable to make the date earlier than 31st July, 1958." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 1510.]
In appointing that further committee, I believe that the Minister has done something which enables him to postpone the banning of this trap for a longer period. What he has done is to set a task for the committee which is quite impossible. He is asking it to find the perfect trap, and the perfect trap is impossible of attainment.
I do not find the Minister's statement today or his statement on Second Reading a convincing argument in favour of 1958. Also, I think that in this matter we are up against vested interests. The Scott Henderson Committee, which considered the question of cruelty to wild animals, also considered this aspect of the matter, and in paragraph 66 of its report, said:
Moreover, experts are apt to be so imbued with the idea of the efficiency of the gin that their criticism of any possible substitute is frequently more destructive than constructive. After very careful consideration we think that a completely new approach to the problem is necessary. We recommend that the sale for use in this country and the use of the gin should be banned by law within a short period of time; that it should be illegal for any spring trap to be used, the design of which is not approved by the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland; and that the Ministers should approve only spring traps which will catch and kill a high proportion of the animals without causing them unnecessary suffering.
We have no doubt that if such a law is passed the trap manufacturers will soon find an effective substitute for the gin. Even if it is not possible to invent a trap which is quite as effective as the gin in catching animals, the


reduction of the cruelty at present involved in the use of the gin will more than compensate for a slight loss of efficiency.
I apologise for having read such a long extract, but it is an important paragraph, which puts succinctly and well the arguments I am trying to put.
Again I must call attention to that first sentence:
Moreover, experts are apt to be so imbued with the idea of the efficiency of the gin that their criticism of any possible substitute is frequently more destructive than constructive.
As I understand it, that sentence was deliberately chosen by a body of eminent people who had given much time, much thought and much study to this problem. They deliberately chose that sentence after having carefully studied this problem over a period of two years.
We should recognise that in regard to this matter there is a certain amount of vested interest—experts as they are called—which should be defeated by a decision of this House of Commons. We should pay attention to, and give legislative effect to, what the Scott Henderson Committee said, particularly in the final sentence which I quoted:
Even if it is not possible to invent a trap which is quite as effective as the gin in catching animals, the reduction of the cruelty at present involved in the use of the gin will more than compensate for a slight loss of efficiency.
So we must pay special attention to the fact of the possible gain in humanity far outweighing the slight loss of efficiency which might be involved in the abolition of the gin trap.
In its report the committee asked this House that the gin should be banned by law within a short period The committee reported in June, 1951; the date proposed by the Minister is seven years after the date of the issue of that report That is much too long a period to elapse between that recommendation and action by the Minister for the cessation of the use of the diabolical instrument which the gin trap happens to be.
If we set this target much earlier the people concerned will adapt themselves to the earlier date. I do not think it is beyond the wit and capacity of manufacturers, farmers, trappers and others in more than 18 months from now to find a trap, to make sufficient and to learn how to use it, and so wipe out those few

animals which will be left by myxomatosis.
Again I revert to the Scott Henderson Committee, because it considered this problem extraordinarily well. The committee asked the Minister to make a special study and conduct a test of the Imbra trap. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary made some reference to it, but the Ministry, after having made a test, issued a Press notice on 20th November 1952, in which it said:
The Minister has already announced in Parliament that initial tests establish the usefulness of the new trap for catching rabbits and appear to indicate that it is a satisfactory substitute for the gin.
In these tests, details of which have now been released by the Ministry, the new trap was equal to the gin trap in catching efficiency and greatly superior to it in avoidance of suffering. In the course of four major trials, in which 935 rabbits were taken under varying conditions, adjustments in design and better handling with practice gave progressive improvement in results, e.g., rabbits dead on trap inspection rose from 91 per cent, to 99 per cent. and catches by head, neck and shoulder—chiefly neck—from 78·2 per cent to 100 per cent. In the first test comparative observations were made, and it was noted that only 4·3 per cent. in the new traps were by leg catches against 99 per cent. leg catches in the gins.
7.0 p.m.
These are not my words but those of the Ministry's officers, who are all very capable men, knowledgeable in the ways of rabbits and the task of catching them. They have studied the problem for a long time, and I am sure that careful civil servants would not have permitted such a notice to be issued were they not sure of the facts.
I would ask the Committee particularly to note these figures:
…only 4·3 per cent. in the new traps were by leg catches against 99 per cent. leg catches in the gins.
We all have to recognise that leg catches are the diabolical feature of the gin trap. The exquisite pain, the lingering death, stamps the gin trap as a hellish instrument of torture.
What has become of the tests? Two years ago the Minister's experts reported as I have just read from that Press notice. I believe that their approval of this new trap is such that even if, in some cases, its catching efficiency is not as high as that of the gin trap, we should take a


decision now to end the use of the latter in July, 1956. That leaves us almost two years to complete the work of tests, to manufacture the trap, and to enable those who require it to practise in its use.
The Minister should make this development something of a major operation by setting the date which we suggest in this Amendment. The mass of the people would respond.

Mr. A. C. M. Spearman: I fully share the detestation which the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) has of the gin trap. When I drew a place in the Private Members' list, I had proposed to introduce a Bill to abolish the gin trap, but I was persuaded not to do so because of the Bill then being prepared. At first I was disappointed that the date fixed was to be not until after 1958. So critical was I of that Bill in that form that I was not able to promise my support for it in the Division Lobby.
Since then the position has been very drastically altered, and the hon. Member's statement that the Minister had gone some way towards meeting us was a very considerable understatement. The hon. Gentleman has not pretended that the abolition of the gin trap can take place immediately. He said it can take place in perhaps two years. The Minister has now changed the time from an indefinite date to 1958. I should have thought that that was going a great deal further in some ways, and meeting us nine-tenths of the way. It would be quite unreasonable now not to support the Government in respect of the present form of the Bill.

Dr. King: The hon. Gentleman said that the Minister has fixed the definite date of July, 1958, but the Minister himself explained that it is quite possible to postpone that date year by year by an order from the Government.

Mr. Spearman: That can only be done with the permission of the House. From our point of view that is the complete security. Certainly, I do not pledge myself to support the Government if they try to delay the date, but I must make up my mind when the time comes. I think that it is quite fair, and the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East, by

seeking to fix the date in 1956, has himself admitted that these things take time.
It is very difficult for the outsider to judge that it will take just two years. To prohibit these gin traps at a prematurely early date, and before the experiments can be carried out with success, would be most unwise, if for no other reason than that, if there is no other practical alternative to the gin trap ready in 1956 and rabbits are swarming everywhere, I have no doubt that, whatever the law may say, the farmers will use it. There is nothing more foolish than for legislators to bring in laws that cannot be enforced, and that, I am sure, is what would happen.
I wholeheartedly support the Government's amended version of the Bill, but I wish to stress one fact. There is not much hope of finding a trap as effective and as cheap as the gin trap. Consequently, unless there is a definite date beyond which the gin trap cannot be manufactured, there is no immediate prospect of a practical alternative. Had such a ban operated in the conditions of a year ago, I believe an adequate trap would have been invented, but I wonder very much whether, with the discouragement to trapping now caused by myxomatosis, there will be enough inducement to inventors to make a trap.
I believe that, under existing circumstances, it is necessary for the Government not only to say that the gin trap shall not be used after a certain date, but to induce inventors to come forward by means of, perhaps, a guarantee that a number of traps will be bought. I know that that will cost money, and I am certainly not one of those who are always encouraging the Government to spend more. In the present circumstances, however, the feeling in the country about the gin trap fully justifies some expenditure and the enormous cost to the farmer justifies it from another angle. I therefore ask the Minister to give some assurance that he will be able to squeeze from the Treasury the funds necessary to implement some such scheme.
I should like to add that, from the many talks that I had with the Minister when he was most closely associated with agriculture, I know of few people in this House who are keener to get rid of the gin trap than is the Minister himself.

Mr. Dugdale: I should like to support the Amendment of my hon. Friend the


Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion). I hope that we shall not regard this as a party matter. This is something about which many hon. Members on both sides of the Committee feel very deeply, and I trust that we shall not think of it as a question of whether the Government will win, or be defeated, by so many votes. Let us, as Members of the House of Commons responsible for whether or not this diabolical trap should be used after a certain period, have a perfectly straightforward discussion. We have a responsibility, and it is for us to decide whether it is observed or not. People will judge us by that.
I hope that we shall treat this matter as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) suggested in another context, as a war operation. We should say that a new trap has got to be found to replace the gin trap, just as we would say that a new aeroplane or a new tank or a new bomb must be found. If we said that in time of war, the necessary tank, aeroplane or bomb would be found within a short time. If we give as much attention to this matter as we should to the production of a weapon of war, we can be certain of finding the answer.
One thing we shall not find is the answer to the trappers' prayer. Let us not put the interests of the trapper before the interests of humanity. Let us not bother about producing a trap which pleases the trapper. What matters is that the rabbit should be exterminated humanely, whether or not it is left in a condition which suits the trapper.
We must take care, too, that the trader's interests are not allowed to subordinate our efforts in abolishing the gin trap. One hon. Member said how important it was that the fur industry, in which his constituency is interested, should be encouraged. Do not let us worry about encouraging the fur industry if it is to be at the expense of humanity. Let us remember the inhumanity involved in this diabolical weapon, rather than pay regard to the interests of fur producers and people who use fur, no matter what hardship it may cause them.
Of course, there are difficulties. It is said that any new trap may be too expensive. I suggest that the Government should consider the possibility, if necessary, of subsidising the production of a

new trap, and even subsidising it to the extent that it may be within the means of those farmers who otherwise could not afford it. It is better to have a more expensive trap subsidised by the Government, if it is humane, than to have an inhumane trap which is not subsidised by the Government.
There is great urgency about the extermination of the rabbit, but let us remember, whether we like it or not—and I do not propose to deal with the point now because there are later Amendments dealing with it—that myxomatosis has done more to destroy rabbits than could ever have been expected before the disease became widespread. The problem of rabbit destruction therefore, is not so great as it was, though I admit that it is still great. Aided by this disease, we should be able to complete the destruction of rabbits with a new and better trap, even if we have to dispense with the gin trap.
There is very great feeling throughout the country on this matter. Not long ago a meeting was convened by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, and resolutions were passed in favour of abolishing the gin trap. It may be said that, as there are no rabbits running about Birmingham, the people of Birmingham do not know anything about the subject. But I believe that this feeling against the gin trap is shared by people not only in the towns but in the country as well, who very often feel more deeply about the matter because they themselves have experienced what is involved in setting these traps and have seen the condition of the rabbits when they are taken from the traps.
For those reasons, I hope that the Government will consider this matter, even at this late stage, in a sympathetic manner and will see whether, as a House of Commons, we can do something to abolish this evil thing.

7.15 p.m.

Sir T. Moore: I imagine that this Clause has aroused more feeling and has caused more emotion than any other part of the Bill. I was glad when the right hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale) said that this is not a party issue but is one in which both sides of the Committee are interested, and that the purpose of the Bill is supported in all constituencies, whether Labour or Conservative.
We must start on that basis, and we must also start on the basis that we all loathe this trap, including the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary. Therefore, when the Minister says that it is impracticable to shorten the time before an alternative humane trap can be put on the market, I am assuming that he is genuinely seeking to do the best he can to get rid of this horrible instrument. I would go further and say that the farmers who use the gin trap loathe using it as much as anyone else. Indeed, they will probably be more glad than anyone—even more so than those who are emotionally aroused—to see an end of it.
As the Minister truly said, trapping must go on. Whether we like it or not, it will go on. Farmers are very conservative in more ways than one, and, with them, trapping has been in existence for centuries. We cannot rely on this horrible myxomatosis, but we can use gas, the long net and other methods, to keep the number of rabbits down, and we hope that they will all play their part. But we must also find this humane trap. I believe that all Ministers concerned, including the Secretary of State for Scotland, have their hearts in this matter. I believe that they are determined to bring an end to this wretched business as soon as they can.
I believe that the committee which has been set up is both energetic and determined. Indeed, I had the privilege of discussing the matter with the chairman of that committee, and I was impressed not only by his knowledge but his determination to find a suitable trap. Indeed, he gave me the assurance that nothing was impossible. I think those were the words he used.
The Minister said that two seasons were essential for testing out any new type of trap which might be invented. We should remember that new traps are being designed every week or month. Therefore, it is not possible to try them all out at once, because we have not got them all at once. I admit that there is an argument for not waiting for the best trap but making one as good as possible. I understand that the interval is likely to be prolonged, and it might be advantageous to test a number of these traps in Australia and New Zealand,

where there are plenty of rabbits. In that way we could double the seasons, since the seasons in those countries do not coincide with ours.
It seems to me that we might telescope the time factor very usefully if that procedure were adopted. If, by utilising the two testing seasons, we found a trap which was adequate and suitable for our needs, perhaps the Minister would not ask for a longer period but would reduce the period by, say, a year, which would be a matter of great comfort to us all.
I now come to the question raised by the right hon. Member for West Bromwich of making it worth while for inventors to invent a new trap, and the question of compensating the farmer for the increased cost of a humane trap. As far as I can ascertain, the cost of the Imbra is about double that of the gin trap.

Mr. Hayman: Could the hon. Gentleman tell us whether the gin trap costs about 2s. 6d., in which case double that price would be around 5s.?

Sir T. Moore: No, the gin trap costs about 4s. 6d. or 5s., and the Imbra costs about 10s.

Mr. Hayman: But surely the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that farmers need subsidising to buy traps which cost 9s. or 10s.?

Sir T. Moore: I most certainly do. If one has 30 or 40 or 300 traps, it comes to an amount which many small farmers could possibly not afford.
However, let me develop my suggestion. There are the two problems, and the Minister has met the first one because he has said he will give ex gratia payments to suitable inventors of acceptable humane traps. The incentive is there provided for every ingenious engineering mind which would like to work in that direction.
The other problem is what to do about the farmer who cannot afford the number of humane traps necessary for his farm until a market has been found on a sufficiently large scale for the new trap there will be no producer ready to make it. So although my hon. Friends and I are strongly averse to subsidies, I do think, for one year at any rate, until a market has been developed and found for a humane trap, a subsidy would be


approved by this House and welcomed by people at large.
I think that the Minister has made a great gesture to meet our complaints and our objections as expressed in the Second Reading debate, and I am confident he will continue his efforts with the same determination to make sure that we get rid of this hated thing as soon as possible.

Mr. Mallalieu: The hon. and gallant Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) has expressed his confidence in the genuineness of the desire of the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary to get rid of this trap as soon as possible. I do not think there is anybody in this House who does not subscribe to that. The trouble is that the Minister is circumscribed by the limits of his own theories on this subject.
He appears to have the rather pessimistic theory—at any rate, it was expressed by the Parliamentary Secretary recently—that not many of us would live to see the day when the rabbit was exterminated. None of us can be exact in our prophecies as to that, but I submit that it is no way in which to enter this drive when I think the House is unanimous in saying should he undertaken now while we have this chance given to us by myxomatosis.
In spite of my belief in the genuine intention of the Minister, I wish to support the manuscript Amendment which my hon. Friend has moved. I do this although I fully acknowledge the Minister has met us very considerably and has gone further than anybody else has gone towards making the abolition of the gin trap a really near thing. But in spite of that, I believe we can quite safely press on by putting 1956 in this Bill as the date at which this trap should be abolished, rather than 1958.
Surely the object of putting any date at all into this Bill is to give notice to those who have vested interests in the gin trap and in the getting rid of rabbits by this method. That surely is the only object. If I differ from my hon. Friends and my right hon. Friends who have spoken from this side of the Committee in any degree at all, it is only in this: some seem to think that it is possible to exterminate the rabbit by trapping. I submit it is not. I do not think even the Minister thinks so.
Every method known must be brought into play now, while we have this

wonderful chance—this terrible chance if hon. Members like it better—to exterminate the rabbit. No matter how long we wait, I submit we can never in the nature of things obtain a trap which could exterminate the rabbit. I have no doubt we could obtain a humane trap, which coupled with all the other things tending towards abolition of the rabbit, may have success, but not by itself.
I therefore submit that if the Government are in any sense holding back this little extra time between 1956 and 1958, it is because they still retain the belief that the trap, in one form or another, is necessary to the abolition of the rabbit. If they have that belief, it is not a bit surprising that there should be this slight pessimism in the mind of the Parliamentary Secretary as to the eventual abolition of this pest.
I urge the Committee that it is worth while putting in this date of 1956, in spite of the generous approach by the Minister, which I readily acknowledge. It is worth while, if only to show people that we are fully alive to this chance, which may not occur again, and which myxomatosis will not leave us for very long—because the rabbits, as we are all agreed, will become immune. It is worth while, if only to show people the necessity of undertaking this drive now on the maximum possible scale and with every possible means at our disposal. I think we should accept the Amendment to the Amendment.

Lieut.-Colonel J. C. Lockwood: I hope that the Government will seriously consider this Amendment to the Amendment. It seems that if the Government Amendment were adopted the position would be that there could be in existence a humane trap but, nevertheless, it would still be possible to use the gin trap, which, we are all agreed, is horrible and beastly. Being anxious, like everybody else, to get rid of this vicious gin trap, I should be most unhappy if, once a humane trap had been discovered, it were possible to use the gin trap. As I understand it, that would be the effect of the Government Amendment.
I was very glad to hear someone say this matter should not be treated as a party one. Obviously it should not be. Everybody in this Committee is humane, and no one person is more anxious than another to get rid of this abominable


gin trap. But I am not prepared to support an Amendment the effect of which might be, and I think will be, that the chance might occur where a humane trap was discovered and yet in spite of that, it was still possible to use this horrible and abominable trap about which we are speaking.
I appeal to the Minister very seriously to consider the Amendment to the Amendment. If he finds that at present he cannot accept it, I wonder whether he would reconsider it and, at a later date, see whether he could not possibly meet the point contained in the Amendment to the Amendment.

Mr. Philips Price: We are faced with an issue of humanity and the getting rid of rabbits to grow more food. There is room for much honest doubt. The speeches we have heard so far cut right across party lines. I confess I am not as confident as my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) about the need for his Amendment to the Amendment. I think on the whole the Minister is wise to leave the Clause as it stands, and that 1958, on the whole, is, in the circumstances, the best year to stipulate.
There must be elasticity in this matter. If a satisfactory trap is discovered before 1958, the date can be advanced; if it is not, it can be postponed. I fully appreciate the difficulties arising in connection with the invention of a humane trap which will also be efficient.
7.30 p.m.
I have consulted pest officers in some counties about the Imbra trap. Although my hon. Friend quoted a report which gave some very satisfactory figures, I wonder if those figures were not based upon the use of this trap only in the most suitable places. The efficiency of the trap depends upon the kind of place where it is used.
There may be some areas where those figures will apply, but there will be others where the effects will be nothing like as good. First, they will not provide as high a catching percentage and, second, in some cases—as pest officers have told me—animals which are caught will still be alive when the trap is next inspected. In other words, it is not always completely humane.
All traps are cruel in one way or another, although I agree that the gin trap is more cruel than any other, and I have banned it on my property for a long time. Under the circumstances which prevail there I am fairly well able to keep down rabbits, because there are no places where a gin trap would be the only possible means to use. But the places I have in mind are sandy warrens, rocky ground and chalk quarries.
One cannot effectively gas rabbits in a sandy warren because the gas goes through the loose earth and only a small percentage of rabbits are killed. Chalk quarries can often be a source of infestation of a whole area. If a sandy warren or an old quarry is ignored, one's land will be infested in spite of all the snares, nets and so on which one may use.
The difficulty about the Imbra trap is that it needs a certain amount of space. It cannot be set in a very small space. If a rabbit went into a quite small rocky hole the Imbra trap could not be set in it. That is why I say that, in view of the dangerous infestation areas, unless we can produce something smaller than the Imbra trap, and something which will also be humane and effective in catching a high percentage of rabbits, it would be unwise to advance the date provided in the Bill.
It is said that vested interests are concerned in this matter. I cannot believe that they have such influence that the Ministry of Agriculture is prevented from employing experts and engineers to find the right trap. We all know the kind of people who catch rabbits by means of the gin trap and who are interested not in exterminating them but in skimming off the surface every year, leaving behind the breeding stock. We need have no consideration for such people, and I believe that the Bill makes it possible to deal with them at last, so that rabbits can be cleared out of the areas where those persons have been operating and making a living.
Many people who are sentimental upon this subject—and also some societies—often make the mistake of talking as if the whole thing were due to vested interests. Only part of the difficulty is due to them; the technical difficulties are immense. I am very glad to know that the Ministry is striving hard to deal with this matter. It is not an easy problem,


because, at the same time, one must try to be both humane and efficient.
In practice, every possible method must be used to deal with rabbits. They are a dangerous pest. Although we all hate the gin trap, I believe that we must use it for the time being in order to keep down rabbits in those areas where it is the only effective weapon. On the whole, I think that the Minister's decision upon this Clause is the wisest one, and that it will succeed in the long run.

Mr. Kenyon: I cannot agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Philips Price), because the trade and all those concerned with this problem have already had some years in which to deal with it. The Scott Henderson Report gave the death knell to the gin trap by its condemnation of that weapon. That was four or five years ago. From that moment, everyone concerned with the trapping of rabbits knew that a new trap or new method would have to be found. If they have not taken any action and are given another four years before they have to do anything we shall just be playing with the question. Action has been taken by many farmers since the report was issued. I do not believe that there are as many gin traps in use as we are led to believe. Many farmers use entirely different methods, such as ferrets, purse nets and long nets, which enable them to get rid of rabbits far more quickly than by trapping them.
It is, nevertheless, a most difficult task to find a trap which will be as effective as the gin trap, because one will have to be produced which will work in a different way. The gin trap is easy to set and to slip inside rabbit burrows. It catches rabbits by their legs; that is its cruelty. The leg is very often torn and broken, and the rabbit suffers for a long time, until it is released. Any trap which does not kill at once will be as cruel as the gin trap. The Committee is envisaging the development of a trap which kills when it strikes, and that will be very difficult if the trap is to be small enough to be slipped into a burrow. A trap which kills has a spring, which has a fly over the rabbit, and in the process it strikes the side of the burrow and so gives the rabbit an opportunity of getting away.

Very often the trap cannot be set in the burrow.
The difficulty those who are trying to get a new type of trap have to overcome is the difficulty of devising a trap that will strike a rabbit on the head or break its back inside the burrow. That is an almost impossible task. That is why I cannot place any faith in trapping. Other methods are far more effective. I suggest to the Minister that he should offer a prize to the inventor who can produce a trap which will kill the rabbit. It should be a substantial prize. It would be worth it.
I differ from my hon. Friends on the subject of myxomatosis. Myxomatosis is not destroying the rabbits as much as we are hoping, because trapping is beginning to cease completely in some parts of the country, because people will not eat rabbits, as they are afraid of getting myxomatosis. The result is that farmers and trappers are not catching rabbits, and trappers have been left with rabbits on their hands. In certain areas, because of myxomatosis, rabbits are increasing faster than ever.
The Minister is in a dilemma. However, difficult situations often produce solutions not for themselves only, but solutions that can be applied in the future. Thus we advance. So I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he offer a substantial prize to the inventor who will produce the necessary and effective trap.
Why do not the newspapers take a hand in this? They spread the news of myxomatosis; they frighten people out of eating rabbits. Why cannot some of the newspapers explain the difficulties about the trap to the public? Then some of our wonderful inventors will be moved to submit their inventions to the Government. If the newspapers were to spread the news of the need for such a trap as effectively as they have spread the fear of myxomatosis, something might be done.
I disagree with the Minister in extending the time to four years. The effectiveness of the gin trap is not so great. Many people use gin traps, but many people do not. The most effective way of getting rid of rabbits is not the trap. There are other more effective means.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Hurd: I support my right hon. Friend's Amendment, because I think it goes fully as far as he dare go with the responsibilities that he has for safeguarding the country's food supply and forestry against rabbits. If Mr. Roland Dudley's Committee is successful in finding an effective alternative to the gin trap—although it may not be so fully effective, let us call it an effective and humane alternative—earlier than 1956 the Minister can, if this Amendment is made, fix an earlier date for the abolition of the gin trap. I think that this committee has rather overlooked that point.
The Minister is taking to himself the power to come to us and say, "I am delighted that Mr. Roland Dudley's Committee has been more successful than I dared to hope, and I can fix an earlier date." If, on the other hand, Mr. Roland Dudley's Committee is not as successful as we hope it will be my right hon. Friend may have to ask the House to agree to postpone the date for abolishing the gin trap.
My concern is that Mr. Roland Dudley's Committee should be able to get on with the job. I know that there have been civil servants tinkering about with this problem for four years—is it not? It was at the instigation of some of us that the last Minister of Agriculture, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks. (Sir T. Dugdale) set up the Roland Dudley Committee. It is, I think, a very good committee, with a practical farmer and engineer as chairman and consisting also of others with first-hand knowledge of the problem in the field and with engineering ingenuity and experience. I am most anxious that this committee should have all the money and facilities it wants. I believe that it is not getting them today.
I should like to see that committee set free from the trammels of the Ministry in its work. I am talking of the financial side. To hasten the day when we can abolish the gin trap, I suggest to my right hon. Friend that he makes a good investment by giving that committee a block grant of £10,000 to spend at its discretion in getting on with its job.
I hear silly stories—I do not know whether they are true—that the head trapper employed by that committee has

to travel by train from place to place because he is not allowed a car allowance as he does not come from the right Civil Service grade to qualify for one. That is nonsense. If we want the committee to do its job, let him have the 6d. a mile car allowance, or whatever it is that civil servants get. That kind of fiddling nonsense does not help forward the work that we want to see done. So I say, give full scope to the committee. I believe that we have got as good a set of men to help us speedily to a solution of this problem as we are likely to get.
I have for years employed two men to catch rabbits, using gin traps, wire snares, ferrets, and gas. We had to use the gin trap. We are not using it at the moment because we have myxomatosis on the farm. It is my view that the spread of myxomatosis from one infected centre to another, so linking the infected areas up, in the next 12 months, will so reduce the rabbit population in this country that, if the Roland Dudley Committee finds and perfects the mechanism of a sound trap, we shall not need two years to get the new trap into adequate commercial production so that we can abolish the gin trap. I do not think the problem will be all that big. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale). I believe that myxomatosis may be our ally and not our enemy, and here I disagree with the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Kenyon), in getting rid of the gin trap.
Although I have had to use the gin trap because in some places it is the only effective weapon we know, I am all in favour of getting rid of it as soon as possible. We must have a practical, humane, alternative, and I am sure that if the Roland Dudley Committee is given all the facilities and finance it wants it will, at the earliest possible date, meet the wishes of us all in this Chamber and of the public outside.

Dr. King: I hope that the Minister and the Press have noted the positive suggestions which have been made in the debate about offering rewards for the invention of humane traps. A newspaper might secure for a long time the kind of publicity which every newspaper wants, and at the same time, render a service to the community, if it undertook this work.
I want to turn the minds of hon. Members to one narrow point in this issue and to plead with the Minister to write a


fixed date into the Bill—even if he will not accept our Amendment to the Amendment—and to make it a fixed date without qualification. Hon. Members have rejoiced at what the Minister has apparently conceded to us as a result of our representations. We commented that under the original drafting it would have been wrong to abolish the gin trap earlier than July, 1958, and that the original words left it possible for it to be abolished in July, 1958, or at any later date. The only certain thing in this vague wording was that it could not be abolished before July, 1958.
What is the position today? The Minister has suggested that under his Amendment it would be possible to abolish the gin trap earlier than 1958. I suggest that that is almost a trap dangled in front of us, because if we wished to propose the abolition of the gin trap in July, 1956, by the order described in this Clause, it would have been necessary to give two years' notice, so that the order would have had to go through the House in July, 1954. The only possible earlier date would, in fact, be July, 1957, and to abolish the gin trap by July, 1957, it would be necessary for the House to pass an order by July, 1955.

Mr. Amory: I am sure that the hon. Member does not mean to suggest that a trap was set. In my opening remarks I made the very point which he is now making. The earliest date at which it could be introduced would be 31st July, 1957.

Dr. King: I can assure the Minister that I used the word "trap" jokingly and with no suggestion of a motive.
The only way in which we could secure the abolition of the gin trap earlier than 1958 would be to get an order through the House by July next year. If that is so, then surely the obvious and simplest way is to write the date July, 1957, into the Bill. If we found subsequently that we could not do it by July, 1957, we could use the apparatus of the Clause to postpone it.
Our case is that as long as there are loopholes, as long as the date is not a fixed date, the position is not satisfactory. Under the Bill the date can recede from July, 1958, to July, 1959, and July, 1960, provided that the Minister comes to the House and pleads successfully for a postponement and provided that he can

rely on the support of the Government majority. It is, therefore, possible that those who are using the gin trap, and who are considering whether the abolition of the trap is to come, have in mind an escape Clause by which the use of the trap could trail on into the dim and distant future.
I believe that nothing stimulates invention more than necessity and I urge the Minister that, whatever date we decide, he should write a date into the Bill and make it a date without an exception.

Sir Victor Raikes: I want to support the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) in asking that a fixed date should be written into the Bill. If we lay it down that the gin trap shall not be used after a certain date, we shall not only make it plain to those who are looking at the problem from a commercial angle that they will not be able to use the trap after that date but we shall also give stimulus to those who are trying to provide an alternative.
It is not so easy to give full enthusiasm to invention if the inventor can say, "The present gin trap is well known as reasonably effective, even if it is cruel, and if we develop a new trap, can we be sure that it will be bought?" He can be sure that it will be bought and used if he knows that the gin trap cannot be used after a certain date, whatever that date may be.
The myxomatosis question, to some extent, confuses us all when we are thinking of future dates. I do not want to speak about myxomatosis now because I hope to say something about it later, but I do not think we shall have a great deal of use for any sort of trap or any sort of prize during the next year or so. Although, at the moment, certain areas are, as has been said, very full of rabbits because they have not yet been affected by myxomatosis, it is my belief and my regret—for I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) that I do not like myxomatosis as an ally, even in the abolition of the gin trap; in my opinion it is the most filthy method of all of killing rabbits—that during this winter in England, at any rate—Scotland may be different—myxomatosis will affect practically every area and the rabbit population of next year will be considerably smaller.
It may well be that, if certain things are done in later stages of the Bill, rabbits will be protected in certain cases; and I hope that that will be so. Nevertheless, the rabbit population next year will be a smaller population. I do not think many People will eat rabbit before 1956, because the present feeling against it will last for a long time.
I am asking the Minister to write a final date into the Bill so that whatever scheme is put forward is assured of a fair chance.

8.0 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison: It is clear that if there is a division of opinion on this subject it is not on party lines. I think every hon. Member wants to see the earliest possible abolition of this inhumane gin trap.
For a number of reasons, I want to support the Amendment to the Amendment. We are asking that the date should be July, 1956, and not July, 1958. In Scotland, the Secretary of State has had powers to do something about the gin trap since 1948. Consequently, if the Minister sticks to the date of 1958, then 10 years will have elapsed since it was felt that the gin trap ought to be abolished and since powers were given to that end.
For a civilised people to take 10 years about it—and according to the Minister's Amendment, possibly even longer than 10 years—is very wrong. Some of my hon. Friends have dealt with all the difficulties which exist, but I cannot help thinking that if this were a defence debate and we were discussing a weapon of war, no hon. Member would have accepted a statement that we must wait until 1958 and perhaps even longer for something for which we had been hunting since 1948.
I want to make the plea that has been made by some of my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee, and by the hon. Member for Garston (Sir V. Raikes) on the other side, that the date should be 1956 or 1957. I should not want it to be any later than 1957, but whether it is 1956 or 1957 let there be no loophole whereby this House can say that the date should be extended to 1958 or 1959, or, as I fear, perhaps even a longer time ahead than that.
Points have been made about what has happened owing to this disease, myxomatosis. The use of the gin trap has been sanctioned because of the depredation by rabbits, and it is said that there is less of that depredation now because of this horrible disease. That seems to be another reason why the Minister should be quite bold and say, either that he will accept our Amendment to the Amendment, or that he will put a firm date of 1957 into the Bill before it is considered on Report stage.
I say that he has nothing to fear from any point of view if he accepts 1956 as the date. Even if the Minister accepted 1955 as the date, he leaves himself the loophole, in his own Amendment, of making it any year beyond 1955 that he may choose. Even if he agreed to 1956 and the rest of his Amendment is accepted by the Committee, he still has that choice. I stress that I should be much happier if there were a definite date put in the Bill without any loophole at all for any future Minister, whether the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Minister of Agriculture, to allow the gin trap to be used after that date.

Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper: I hope that the Minister will heed the words which have been uttered from both sides of the Committee showing that there is a desire that a fixed date should be written into the Bill. Personally, I do not like the Minister's Amendment, for two reasons. First, I think that the date of 1958 is too far away, and, secondly, that the power of one year's extension is unreasonable in all the circumstances.
Let us be realists about this matter. We are not embarking upon any great scientific undertaking. This is a simple practical job of work to which people interested in this industry ought to be able to address their minds with some idea of finding a solution within a matter of months. My mind goes back to the days of the war when this country was losing ships every day by magnetic mines. The scientists of this country were given dates by which to find a solution to the menace of the magnetic mine, and they succeeded. There were many other problems of even greater moment which were forced upon the country during those dreadful years, and the scientists found the solution very quickly.
Here is something which, on the surface, would appear to be very simple. I am sure that if we simply talk about this matter tonight and give the impression in the country that four years is all right, with possibly another year, making five, the attitude of the people concerned with this problem will be just as slothful as five years permits them to be.
I am sure that if we were to write into the Bill a specific date—and I hope that the Minister will find it possible to accept 1956 as that date—a remedy would be found in that time which would be acceptable to all concerned.

Mr. Somerville Hastings: I think that we must all be grateful to the Minister for the time and trouble he has taken in the preparation of his Amendment, which goes some way towards meeting our wishes. As I see it, everything depends on the invention of some efficient substitute for the gin trap. If no substitute is discovered, the Minister has power to put off the abolition of this trap from year to year by the vote of this House. I feel that a definite date ought to be put into the Bill.
I am not as sanguine as the Minister and some other hon. Members seem to be about the discovery of an efficient substitute for the gin trap. I can speak with some experience of the use of the Sawyer and the Imbra trap. I was not very successful with the Imbra trap. I worked on sandy soil, and unless I netted the burrow from each end the trap would not work at all. I never succeeded in catching a rabbit with it. I feel that the Minister is wrong in making the abolition of the gin trap dependent upon the discovery of a workable substitute.
There are many other ways of catching rabbits and of completely getting rid of them, quite apart from traps of this nature. There is the wire netting method, the gassing method—although I know that cannot be used in sandy soil and under other conditions—and there is also our old friend the ferret—a very useful fellow indeed.
I do not think that we have of necessity to depend on the discovery of another spring trap. I agree with many hon. Members on both sides of the Committee who feel that the Minister ought to put a definite date in the Bill and that, whether a substitute is found or not, the

use of the gin trap should be made illegal after that date.

Mr. J. B. Godber: I should not have risen but for the remarks made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader Cooper). With regard to the question of finding a substitute, I feel that only if he is prepared for the allocation of unlimited powers to be inserted in the Amendment can he complete his analogy of war-time conditions. Then it might be that we should find some substitute in the space of time which he envisaged.
We have a duty to the farming community as well as the one based on humanitarian grounds. We are all agreed on the necessity of abolishing the gin trap. We all accept that in principle, but we have a duty to see that when we pass legislation such as this we provide some satisfactory alternative.
That responsibility is laid on us fairly and squarely. At the moment we have not so provided, and I urge the Minister to stand by the Amendment which he has moved, and which, I think, goes as far as he can safely go to ensure that some provision is made before this legislation comes into force. Otherwise we are putting the agricultural community at a tremendous disadvantage and one to which it is not fair to put it.
Whilst we commend the Dudley Committee for its valuable work—and I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) paid tribute to it for what it is doing—and accept the suggestion made by hon. Members opposite that a large sum of money should be offered as a prize to anyone who can produce a satisfactory alternative, we must at the same time safeguard the position of the farmer if we really mean what we say about food production in this country. It would be a mockery to do anything else, and I would urge my right hon. Friend to stick to the Amendment that he has moved.

Sir Leslie Plummer: I want to take a different view from that of the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Godber) and impress upon the Minister the necessity to accept the Amendment to the Amendment that has been moved, because I believe that the problem is an urgent and pressing one and that it is very necessary to use every incentive to try to find out what is a more effective and humane


way of getting rid of rabbits. It is about time that we in this Committee recognised the fact that Miss Beatrix Potter has done more harm by her deification of this wretched, verminous, horrible scourge on our land which interferes to such a degree with our food production.
What is absolutely clear is that everybody is against the gin trap and in this context there is constant war between the countryman and the townsman. The townsman has taken his side in the belief that the gin trap is awful and myxomatosis is something that should not be allowed to spread. Arising out of that is the fact that we are faced with the implacable determination of the townsman to do everything he can to get rid of the gin trap. He has been aided, as some of my hon. Friends have been aided, by the view that myxomatosis will greatly reduce the rabbit population over the next few years to such a degree that the time has come to get rid of this trap.
But has it? There is already evidence that the result of myxomatosis is such that the rabbits which survive are now breeding bigger litters and that the litters are coming earlier to maturity. This follows on the fact that the competition for feeding is not so great nor is the competition for room in the burrows, and it may be that we are at the beginning of a time of breeding a healthier and more vigorous type of rabbit than we have had in this country for some time. If that is true—and it may well be true—when we overcome the first wave of this disease it will be found that the survivors are stronger, bigger, and better rabbits than their predecessors.
Thus we are faced with the problem of how we are to get rid of them. We shall be faced with the implacable opposition of the townsman to the gin trap, and if we are to have something in its place I believe we have to insert in the Bill an earlier date which will be an incentive to inventors to find something that is more effective, more humane, and a better substitute for the gin trap.
We are giving to farmers every year an untold sum of money—it amounts to thousands of pounds—in subsidy for cartridges for shooting pigeons and rooks. Almost any farmer can get 50 per cent. of the cost of his cartridges. I am not

complaining about that, but an equivalent sum of money spent now in a drive against the rabbit to try to encourage inventors to find some other way would be equally well spent. If, by the acceptance of this Amendment to the Amendment, it is made clear that time is the absolute essence of this problem we should be going a long way to ridding our land of this great enemy of production.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. Nugent: This interesting debate has ranged over two aspects of the subject, humanitarian and practical, which are in the minds of all of us. I can assure the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) that we are all susceptible to the very delightful stories of Beatrix Potter, and that whatever difficulties she may have created for us we feel they are more than outweighed by the charm of her stories.
Our dilemma, as a Government, is not a new one. The gin trap has been with us for generations and every Government has been concerned with a similar problem: the problem of finding the right balance between the interests of agriculture, food and forestry and the humanitarian feeling which all of us share about the rabbit. My right hon. Friend explained in his opening speech why we struck the balance we did and why he has put down his Amendment on the Notice Paper.
A number of hon. Members have made the point that it is desirable to have a definite date in the Bill. But the date of 1958 is definite. We have heard tonight an expression of view from both sides of the Committee, and it is perfectly clear that all of us want to see the end of the gin trap. We realise it is a cruel thing and we are most anxious to bring it to an end. We on this side feel that 1958 is certainly the latest date to which we should go, but we have put in the Bill provision for an affirmative Resolution by which a future Minister can come to the House to seek an extension if he feels that he has grounds for it.
I believe that the House of Commons will require a Minister to have an exceptionally strong case if it is to be persuaded to agree to an affirmative Resolution of that sort and in putting in that safeguard we are putting in what we consider is the


very barest safeguard which we think any Minister ought to have in view of his heavy responsibility for food production and forestry. I think it is evident that the circumstances would have to be very exceptional indeed for any Minister to get such an affirmative Resolution approved, and to all intents and purposes, unless something quite exceptional turns up, we are committing ourselves to 1958. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee who feel doubts on that score will accept the cogency of what I have just said.
I have no doubt at all that that is the way outside interests will look at it. In fact, hardly any gin traps are being sold in this country today. That is partially due to myxomatosis; but also to the fact that everyone sees that the use of gin traps is coming to an end, and that 1958 is probably the latest date when there will be any permission for them to be used. I believe we have given definition to that position.
I can certainly assure the Committee that vested interests are not standing in our way, either from the point of manufacture or of trapping, because, as some hon. Members have observed about trapping, it is now almost impossible to sell a rabbit carcase. I hope that those who have doubts on that score will be reassured by the provision we have put in the proposed Government Amendment which would enable my right hon. Friend supposing the progress in the development of a trap or traps is exceptional and better than we can possibly expect at present, to make it earlier than 1958. He could make it July, 1957, if such exceptional circumstances arose, but we think that that is unlikely.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) spoke about the Imbra trap. The report from which he quoted with such cogency was, of course, the interim report. It would be fair to remind the Committee of what the final report said, because the interim report dealt with only a pilot scheme on a relatively small scale. It was in the following year that we embarked on a really large-scale test with thousands of traps in nearly every county. The result of that work was published in a report which was put in the Library, and I am sure that many Members read it.
That final report showed that the pilot scheme had given results that were, unfortunately, all too optimistic. The catching efficiency in the major scheme was that three out of the 48 county committees which used it considered, after over 2,000 settings, that the Imbra trap was more efficient than the gin trap; 23 committees, after over 21,000 settings, considered that it was as efficient as the gin trap; 22 committees, after over 27,000 settings, considered that it was less efficient than the gin trap, and four counties considered that in certain locations it would, generally speaking, not be usable.
It was as the result of that very large-scale work that we were bound to reach the conclusion that although the Imbra trap had much to commend it, and certainly is more humanitarian, because it usually kills the rabbit, it was still not as good as we would like it to be to supply the continuing practical need for some kind of spring trap for the use of farmers and gamekeepers generally.

Mr. Hayman: Can the Parliamentary Secretary tell us the percentage of kills of these tests with the Imbra trap?

Mr. Nugent: Yes, I could, but I do not think that the Committee would want me to go into great detail now. The report was in the Library for some time, and I should be glad to supply the hen. Member with full details. I think, however, that I have said enough to show that although the Imbra trap had certain advantages, it still was far from being even a reasonably satisfactory alternative.
It was in the light of that report that the Bill was drafted with its original caution that it would be unwise for my right hon. Friend to commit himself to banning the gin trap before 1958. Therefore, it was not until it was clear that public feeling was so strong on the matter that my right hon. Friend finally felt that he should commit himself to this Amendment that the trap would be banned by 1958 and thereby take quite a substantial risk that we might not have something that is really adequate.
We are not striving here for perfection, and we realise that we have no prospect of it. All that we are trying to do is to get one or more reasonably efficient traps which will be satisfactorily humanitarian in that they will kill


the rabbits. My right hon. Friend is anxious for the Committee to understand that we are not striving for perfection but that we believe we have a reasonable chance of having such a trap developed and distributed and available by 1958.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: The Parliamentary Secretary has expressed doubt whether it would be possible to have this suitable trap, as he calls it, by 1957. There is only one year's difference between that year and 1958, which is specified in the Bill. Does the hon. Gentleman really think that one year will make all the difference and will see the production of a suitable trap?

Mr. Nugent: I will, if I may, deal with the time-table in detail, because I realise the Committee's interest in every aspect. The Opposition Amendment proposes that July, 1956, should be the date. When I deal with the time-table in detail, hon. Members will see that there is no prospect whatever of our having even a reasonably efficient trap developed and produced—because after we have developed it, it must then be produced and distributed—by 1956.
The Humane Traps Advisory Committee has had under review all the traps that have been designed over the past years for this purpose and has selected those which seem to have the best chance of being developed so that they can make a good job. The advisory committee has selected those with the best chance and has had them produced in sufficient numbers so as to try them out during this winter on a number of different sites with different soils, conditions, and so on. That will afford the first practical trial of whether these traps really can catch a rabbit, and catch it humanely.
As my right hon. Friend said in opening the discussion, one of the most promising traps, which appeared extremely good when we looked at it, does everything except catch a rabbit. That is one of the disappointments that we encounter. It is extremely difficult to design a trap which will not only catch the rabbit, but will kill the rabbit as it comes out of the hole or goes into the hole. It is infinitely more difficult than designing a trap which will catch one of its four legs.
The problem confronting the Roland Dudley Committee is a difficult one. However, that committee has gone to work with great energy and my right hon. Friend has authorised me to say that it will certainly not be handicapped in any way through lack of funds in its development work, and that when the time comes that a trap has been found which is reasonably satisfactory, the committee will not be handicapped for its commercial development.
We fully recognise that the commercial development of such a trap will be quite a problem. People will be doubtful whether it is good enough to use in practice and, secondly, myxomatosis might still be hanging over the market and preventing people from buying the carcases. We recognise that there may have to be financial help from the Government to get commercial development brought about, but it will be available when the time comes.
In the meantime, the Roland Dudley Committee has funds available for making ex-gratia payments to those designers who bring forward traps which eventually are good enough to go into commercial production. There may be more than one—we hope there will be several—but it would obviously be impracticable to give a substantial prize to anybody who comes forward with a trap which he claims will kill, because, unfortunately, experience shows that very few traps will do so. Therefore, the test will be that the trap is good enough eventually to be developed, by the work that the Roland Dudley Committee is now doing, to the point of commercial use.
8.30 p.m.
We have considered the point about making use of the summer period in the southern hemisphere, but it will probably be too difficult to arrange. The difficulty is that each time the traps are set they have to be very carefully watched to see what the rabbit does, how the trap operates and how it catches the rabbit, and the same people must watch it all the time. Alterations are then made. These may relate to the strength of the spring, the position of the spring or the adjustment of the catches, and so on.
It is a very exact and complicated matter; it is a combination of the engineer's skill and of the countryman's art


with the trap. It would be extremely difficult for us to direct that sort of thing over such a distance, but we will certainly put the suggestion to the committee, and if the committee can make use of it, we will make the best means available for the use of the summer period.
The programme this winter will begin as I have described. We hope that by the end of the winter two or three promising traps will have been found. There will then be further trials next winter. I wish to impress upon the Committee that the trials are inevitably lengthy. During a period of frost the traps are put out of action, and each time the trap fails to operate satisfactorily, one has to make adjustments and try again, and the months very soon go by. Therefore, if, on that basis, we get one or more satisfactory traps by the end of the second season we shall really have made good progress.
The chairman of the committee has authorised me to say that if his task was to have the trap perfected, produced and distributed by 1956 he and his committee would say that it was absolutely impossible and would throw in their hands. It simply could not be done. Therefore, the committee will proceed on the timetable which I have described, and I hope that it will have achieved something by the spring of 1956.
We think that an interval of about two years will then be needed in which to find a manufacturer and for him to get tooled up to manufacture the fairly large number of traps needed—it is difficult to predict how many, but it will not be as many as the 2 million or 3 million now in use; it will probably be some hundreds of thousands—and to get them distributed to ironmongers throughout the country, giving the farmers, gamekeepers and others a chance to buy them and find out how to use them.

Mr. Dugdale: As soon as it is known that there is a good trap and its manufacture begins, will instructions be given that the manufacture of the old trap is to cease? Some of us fear that a large number of the old traps will be manufactured and that there will then be pressure to allow them to remain in use.

Mr. Nugent: I do not think that that is likely to arise. Unless my right hon. Friend comes to the House before July,

1956, with an affirmative Resolution to extend the date, July, 1958, is when the gin trap will be banned, and everybody will know that.
I should like the Committee to think for a minute of the position of the farmer when the trap is banned. The two million or three million traps which we estimate to be in existence at present are to be found on nearly every farm in the country, certainly on hundreds of thousands of farms, in the hands of farmers, farm workers, gamekeepers and trappers. When the gin trap is banned, it will become a crime for the farmer or farm worker to use it, a crime for which on the first offence he may be fined £20 and on the second offence £50. That is a serious matter. I feel that we must be as certain as we can be that when that time comes there is available at all the ironmongers in the country a reasonably efficient humane alternative which the farmer can use.
Otherwise, this situation may arise. There may be a farmer on a 50 or 60-acre farm with 10 acres of autumn wheat over which a dozen or so rabbits are running, trimming it and ruining the crop, and the farmer may have nothing with which to catch them. Yet he may have his old gin traps in the barn. It would be a very strong temptation to him to use the gin traps again. If he did so, he would commit a very serious crime. If he were hauled before the bench, I feel that the bench, with its sense of English justice, would find it extremely difficult to say that the man had committed a very serious offence.
I feel that, despite the sense of urgency and the anxiety that we all feel, because we all want to end the cruelty of the gin trap, we must bear in mind the practical position of the farmer. I am not talking about the man who traps for a living or for a hobby; I am referring to the farmer who farms for his living and to produce our food. It is his job to control the rabbits and keep them down. We must not put him in a position where he cannot do that because we have not evolved any reasonable alternative but have deprived him of the instrument which has been used for generations.
This is not a party matter. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite had the problem before them for six years just as much as we have had it. The Scott Henderson Report did not create a new


situation. We have all known for many years what a cruel thing a gin trap is, but for six years, when the Opposition were on this side of the House, they had this same problem before them, and I could turn up occasions on which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore) pressed the then Minister of Agriculture and got from him answers similar to what we give today.
I would, therefore, urge hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to see this matter in its right perspective. We cannot just look at it from the rabbit's point of view, however strongly we feel about the humanitarian aspect; we must look at it from the farmer's point of view, too. I hope that the Committee will agree that the Amendment put down by my right hon. Friend is fair and reasonable, that it goes to the limit to which we can go with the heavy responsibilities that we have, and will, therefore, accept it as a reasonable Amendment to meet a very difficult position.

Mr. Champion: I should like to say straight away that, had I realised that the report I was quoting was an interim report, I would not have quoted it. I apologise to the Committee for having quoted an interim report on the Imbra trap, but I certainly did not realise that it was an interim report. Had I seen the final report, I should have considered it and quoted from it if I found that it helped my point of view at all.
As we have had it from the Parliamentary Secretary, it seems to me that, despite the fact that it is not as good as the interim report makes it out to be, the Imbra is, nevertheless, an excellent trap, and, if not as brutally efficient as the gin trap, certainly worthy of every consideration by anyone who wants to see the diabolical gin trap abolished as soon as possible.

The Parliamentary Secretary has answered this debate in his usual very persuasive manner. He has done extraordinarily well, but he would not wish us to forget the fact that we really believe that we should be driving people to take an important decision if we inserted 1956 instead of 1958 in the Bill. I rather hoped that he and his Minister would have acceded to the extremely powerful appeals that came from his own side. The hon. and gallant Members for Ilford, South (Squadron-Leader Cooper) and Romford (Lieut.-Colonel Lockwood), and the hon. Member for Garston (Sir V. Raikes) all made very strong appeals to him to accept this date, always realising that the date which we hoped to insert was a target date and not a final date, if on agricultural grounds the Minister felt that he could come back to the House and justify a postponement for a further period.

Sir V. Raikes: It is only fair that I should say that in the speech I made I said that I was not suggesting an absolute date, and did not of necessity support the date mentioned in the Opposition Amendment.

Mr. Champion: I did not seek to quote the hon. Gentleman. I realise that he made a very powerful appeal to his Minister to do something about the date already in the Bill.
I believe that this is the sort of thing upon which this House could demonstrate its desire to have a very much earlier date than that which the Minister proposes in his Amendment, which I agree is an improvement on the Bill itself. We still feel, however, that 1956 should be mentioned in the Bill, and I hope that all those who agree with me in that direction will demonstrate it in the Division Lobby.

Question put, "That 'fifty-eight' stand part of the proposed Amendment."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 214; Noes, 192.

Division No. 230.]
AYES
[8.39 p.m.


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Beach, Maj. Hicks
Buchan-Hepburn. Rt. Hon. P. G. T.


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Bullard, D. G.


Amory, Rt. Hon. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Burden, F. F. A.


Anstruther-Gray, Major W. J.
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Campbell, Sir David


Arbuthnot, John
Bennett, William (Woodside)
Carr, Robert


Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)
Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Cary, Sir Robert


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Bishop, F. P.
Channon, H.


Astor, Hon. J. J.
Black, C. W.
Churchill, Rt. Hon Sir Winston


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.
Bossom, Sir A. C.
Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)


Baldwin, A. E.
Boyle, Sir Edward
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)


Banks, Col. C.
Braine, B. R.
Cole, Norman


Barber, Anthony
Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger


Barlow, Sir John
Browne, Jack (Govan)
Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert




Cooper-Key, E. M.
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Raikes, Sir Victor


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Kaberry, D.
Ramsden, J. E.


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C
Kerby, Capt. H. B.
Rayner, Brig. R.


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Kerr, H. W.
Redmayne, M.


Crouch, R. F.
Lambert, Hon. G.
Rees-Davies, W. R


Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Renton, D. L. M.


Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)
Langford-Holt, J. A.
Ridsdale, J. E


Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Roberts, Peter (Heeley)


Davidson, Viscountess
Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)
Robertson, Sir David


Deedes, W. F.
Lindsay, Martin
Robson-Brown, W.


Digby, S. Wingfield
Linstead, Sir H. N.
Roper, Sir Harold


Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. G. (King's Norton)
Russell, R. S.


Donner, Sir P. W.
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas


Drewe, Sir C.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.


Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)
Scott, R. Donald


Duthie, W. S.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Scott-Miller, Comdr. R.


Errington, Sir Eric
McCallum, Major D.
Sharples, Maj. R. C.


Erroll, F. J.
McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.
Shepherd, William


Fell, A.
Macdonald, Sir Peter
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Finlay, Graeme
McKibbin, A. J.
Snadden, W. McN.


Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)
Soames, Capt. C.


Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Spearman, A. C. M


Ford, Mrs. Patricia
Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Speir, R. M.


Fort, R.
MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard


Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)
Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)
Stevens, Geoffrey


Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)


Garner-Evans, E. H.
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir Reginald
Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)


Glover, D.
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.


Godber, J. B.
Marples, A. E.
Storey, S.


Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.
Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)


Gough, C. F. H.
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Summers, G. S.


Gower, H. R.
Medlicott, Brig. F.
Sutcliffe, Sir Harold


Graham, Sir Fergus
Mellor, Sir John
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)
Molson, A. H. E.
Thomas Leslie (Canterbury)


Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Moore, Sir Thomas
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Morrison, John (Salisbury)
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Neave, Airey
Touche, Sir Gordon


Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfield)
Nicholls, Harmar
Turner, H. F. L.


Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)
Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)
Turton, R. H.


Harvie-Watt, Sir George
Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)
Vane, W. M. F.


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel




Heath, Edward
Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Nugent, G. R. H..
Vosper, D. F.


Higgs, J. M. C
Oakshott, H. D
Walker-Smith, D. C.


Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Odey, G. W.
Wall, Major Patrick


Holland-Martin, C. J.
O'Neill, Hon. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Osborne, C.
Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.


Horobin, I. M.
Page, R. G.
Watkinson, H. A.


Horsbrugh, Rt, Hon. Florence
Partridge, E.
Wellwood, W.


Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)
Peake, Rt. Hon. O.
Williams, Rt. Hon. Charles (Torquay)


Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Perkins, Sir Robert
Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)


Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)
Peto, Brig. C. H. M.
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Hard, A. R.
Pitman, I. J.
Wills, G.


Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.
Powell, J Enoch
Wood, Hon. R.


Hylton-Foster, Sir H. B. H.
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)



Iremonger, T. L.
Price-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Profumo, J. D
Mr. Studholme and




 Mr. Edward Wakefield.




NOES


Acland, Sir Richard
Burke, W. A.
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)


Albu, A. H.
Burton, Miss F E.
Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)
Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)


Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)
Carmichael, J.
Fernyhough, E.


Awbery, S. S.
Champion, A. J
Fienburgh, W.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Chapman, W D.
Follick, M.


Balfour, A.
Chetwynd, G. R.
Foot, M. M.


Bartley, P.
Clunie, J.
Forman, J. C.


Bence, C. R.
Coldrick, W.
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)


Benn, Hon. Wedgwood
Collick, P. H.
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.


Benson, G.
Corbel, Mrs. Freda
Gibson, C. W.




Gooch, E. G.


Bing G. H. C.
Cullen, Mrs. A.
Greenwood, Anthony


Blackburn, F.
Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Grey, C. F.


Boardman, H.
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Davies Stephen (Merthyr)
Hale, Leslie


Bowden, H. W.
Deer, G.
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)


Bowen, E. R
Dodds, N. N.
Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwish)
Hamilton, W. W.


Brockway, A. F.
Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Hannan, W.


Brook, Dryden (Halifax)
Edwards, Rt. Hon. John (Brighouse)
Hardy, E. A.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Hargreaves, A.







Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)
Mikardo, Ian
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Hastings, S.
Mitchison, G. R.
Skeffington, A. M.


Hayman, F. H.
Monslow, W.
Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)


Healey, Denis (Leeds, S.E.)
Moody, A. S.
Slater, J. (Durham, Sedgefield)


Herbison, Miss M.
Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.
Smith, Norman (Nottingham, S.)


Hobson, C. R.
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Sorensen, R. W.


Holman, P.
Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, S.)
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank


Holt, A. F.
Moyle, A.
Sparks, J. A.


Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)
Mulley, F. W.
Steele, T.


Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Murray, J. D.
Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)


Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Nally, W.
Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.


Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)


Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.
Stross, Dr. Barnett


Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Oldfield, W. H.
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)
Oswald, T.
Sylvester, G. O.


Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.
Padley, W. E.
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)
Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)
Viant, S. P.


Johnson, James (Rugby)
Palmer, A. M. F.
Wade, D. W.


Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech
Pannell, Charles
Warbey, W. N.


Jones, David (Hartlepool)
Pargiter, G. A.
Watkins, T. E.


Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Parker, J.
Weitzman, D.


Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Paton, J.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Keenan, W.
Pearson, A.
West, D. G.


Kenyon, C.
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Wheeldon, W. E.


Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Popplewell, E.
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


King, Dr. H. M.
Porter, G.
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)


Lawson, G. M.
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Wigg, George


Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Probert, A. R.
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


MacColl, J. E.
Proctor, W. T.
Wilkins, W. A.


McGhee, H. G.
Pryde, D. J.
Willey, F. T.


MoGovern, J.
Rankin, John
Williams, David (Neath)


MoInnes, J.
Reeves, J.
Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)


McKay, John (Wallsend)
Reid, William (Camlachie)
Williams, Ronald (Wigan)


MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Rhodes, H.
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Richards, R.
Willis, E. G.


Mann, Mrs. Jean
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Manuel, A. C.
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Wyatt, W. L.


Mason, Roy
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Yates, V. F.


Mayhew, C. P.
Ross, William



Mellish, R. J.
Shackleton, E. A. A.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Messer, Sir F.
Silverman, Julius (Erdington)
Mr. Holmes and Mr. Wallace.


Question put, and agreed to.

Proposed words there inserted.

Further Amendment made: In page 8, line 11, after "section," insert:
(other than an order made under the last foregoing subsection)."—[Mr. Amory.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10.(AMENDMENT OF AGRICUL- TURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1948, AS TO SPRING TRAPS.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

Miss Herbison: It has just been decided to amend Clause 8. Will the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland say what effect that Amendment will have on this Clause? As I understand, Clause 10 does for Scotland what Clause 8 does for England and Wales.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. McNair Snadden): The hon. Lady is quite right. As she has pointed out, the Secretary of State for Scotland took power, in 1948, to ban the

gin trap for catching rabbits. We are now extending this power to cover all animals. Our intention is that the final step to ban the gin trap in Scotland shall be timed to coincide with its banning by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture. In this Clause we have followed the drafting used by our predecessors in 1948. I assure the hon. Lady that the banning of the gin trap will be carried out at the same time by the Secretary of State as by the Minister of Agriculture.

Miss Herbison: But in no part of our Scottish legislation do we have the guarantee which has been given by the Minister of Agriculture today. It is not in any legislation. Is it a fact, as we have just had the assurance of the Joint Under-Secretary, that that will apply?

Mr. Snadden: Perhaps it will satisfy the hon. Lady if I say that the Secretary of State for Scotland is in receipt of the same advice as is the Minister of Agriculture. They set up a committee jointly, and it is quite impossible for the two Ministers to differ on a matter of this


sort. I can assure her that we shall act jointly in this.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 11 to 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause.—(EXTENSION OF POWER TO CONTRIBUTE TO COST OF DESTRUCTION OR PREVENTIVE MEASURES.)

(1) The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries may with the approval of the Treasury make contributions towards the expenses incurred or to be incurred by any person in killing, taking or destroying animals or birds to which section ninety-eight of the Agriculture Act, 1947, applies or the eggs of such birds, in destroying or reducing breeding places or cover for rabbits or in excluding rabbits therefrom, or in preventing the rabbits living in any place from spreading to or doing damage in any other place.

(2) This section shall apply to Scotland with the substitution for the references to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and to section ninety-eight of the Agriculture Act, 1947, of references to the Secretary of State and to section thirty-nine of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act, 1948.—[Mr. Amory.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Amory: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
The purpose of the Clause is really almost a counterpart of that of Clause 2, which dealt with services. The new Clause will enable the Minister to make grants towards the cost of doing the work in the clearance areas and, particularly, towards the cost of clearing and fencing.

Mr. Champion: When we were discussing this subject on Second Reading, we referred to what will now be Clause 3. Following some points raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu), we asked if, under that Clause, it would be possible to make contributions towards the expenses incurred by individuals in the destruction of rabbits. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary then replied:
We do not normally intend to contribute to the actual destruction."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 1554.]
I wonder if it is not the intention here to use Section 98 of the 1947 Act, to which we are here making some additions, in order to assist the individual farmer actually to destroy rabbits, as well as to make contributions to clearance, wiring and so on. I have returned to this

point despite the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary made some reply on the previous occasion. I should like to have his final word as to whether it is intended to make contributions to individuals.
The other point which arises is what machinery under this Clause will be used to decide how these amounts will be paid? Will the Minister merely consult the Treasury and issue instructions to his local officers, county agricultural executive committees and so on?

Mr. Nugent: I confirm that what I told the hon. Gentleman previously continues to be our policy. The whole philosophy of the Bill is that it is the occupier's responsibility to destroy the rabbits. What we are doing is to help him in every way that we can. Therefore, it is not our intention normally to make grants towards the cost of rabbit destruction.
Our grants will be intended normally to assist with scrub clearance, bulldozing of big warrens, wiring where this proves necessary, and extensive operations of that kind inside these clearance areas. As the Committee will have seen in the Explanatory Memorandum, we expect that in a full year they will amount to about £200,000, so that our assistance in this respect will be really substantial.
On the hon. Gentleman's second point, these grants will be paid by the county agricultural committees on behalf of my right hon. Friend. Normally the grants will be made at the rate of 50 per cent. of expenditure that has been approved by the pest officers in the counties, who will have consulted with the individual occupiers to approve the different scrub clearance, wiring and other schemes which may be necessary under this Mea sure.

Mr. Champion: It is the Explanatory Memorandum which causes me to return to this point. It says that it
enables the Ministers to make contribution towards the cost of destroying pests…
and it goes on to say:
whether done by individuals or by bodies of persons.
I thought that the Parliamentary Secretary had missed that point, which is, at any rate, in the Explanatory Memorandum, even if it is not actually in the Bill.

Mr. Nugent: The Bill certainly gives my right hon. Friend that power, but we do not normally intend to use it. There may be exceptional cases where it will be desirable, but normally if we do actual rabbit destruction work we shall expect to recover the cost of that work from the occupier.

Mr. Gooch: The Minister will be aware that in a number of counties plans have been prepared on a county basis. I should like to know whether there will be joint action of this kind, or whether it is to be the responsibility of the county agricultural committees to deal with the occupiers concerned. In Norfolk there has been prepared a scheme which will cover the whole county. I should not like that scheme to fail through funds not being available for certain purposes. May I have an assurance on that point?

Mr. Nugent: I can give the hon. Member the assurance that funds will be readily available, in the terms that I have indicated, for the establishment of these clearance areas and for doing the clearance work and, if necessary, wiring inside those areas, but normally we shall expect the occupiers to bear the cost of the rabbit destruction.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause.—(EXPENSES AND RECEIPTS OF MINISTERS.)

(1) There shall be paid out of moneys provided by Parliament any expenses incurred by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries or the Secretary of State by virtue of Part I of this Act.

(2) There shall be paid into the Exchequer any sums received by or on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries or the Secretary of State—

(a) under subsection (2) of section one hundred of the Agriculture Act, 1947, or subsection (2) of section forty-one of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act, 1948, as applied or extended by section one or subsection (1) of section two of this Act; or
(b) under section one hundred and one of the Agriculture Act, 1947, or section forty-two of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act, 1948, as extended by subsection (2) of section two of this Act.—[Mr. Amory.]

Brought up, and read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause.—(SPREADING OF MYXOMATOSIS.)

A person shall be guilty of an offence if he knowingly uses or permits the use of a rabbit infected with myxomatosis to spread the disease among uninfected rabbits and shall be liable on summary conviction to the penalties laid down in subsection (2) of section eight of this Act.—[Dr. King.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

9.0 p.m.

Dr. King: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
This new Clause would make an offence the deliberate spreading of myxomatosis and would subject any one who was found guilty of that offence to the penalties which we have imposed in this Bill on any one who uses the gin trap after the date on which this Bill makes its use illegal.
I regret that a back bencher is moving this new Clause, and sincerely regret that it is not the Minister himself. I hope that during the debate it will receive more distinguished support than I can give it in my own speech. But, if the Clause is inadequately presented, what it seeks to achieve has the support of the outraged conscience of the majority of British people. I mention as an example only the petition from over 100,000 British citizens which my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) presented to the House last week. I also refer hon. Members to the list of names to a Motion which stands on the Order Paper urging the Minister to take some such action as is asked for in this Clause.
If there is anything the matter with the wording of the Clause, obviously we would accept any alteration which the Minister and the Parliamentary draftsmen would seek to make, if they would concede to us what the Clause aims to do. In commending this Clause to the House, I would say that the noble Lady the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir), whose name appears as one of the sponsors to this Clause, unfortunately cannot be here to speak, because she is doing a very important job in another part of the world on behalf of the Government. Hon. Members on both sides know her judgment in these things as one that would commend a Measure which she supports to the House.
I am pleased that this new Clause has the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch), who can claim to speak as much as anybody in the country for the country's organised agricultural workers. I would say that I am a strong party man and am known as such in my constituency. But, I have received letters of support for this Clause and what it seeks to do from people of all political parties, including members of one of the Conservative associations in my town.
I am glad that issues like this, one of monstrous cruelty to rabbits, should lower party barriers and that people of all political parties, in the House and outside, should speak with one voice. I think that voice says "We are ashamed of what has happened in Britain during these last 12 months and we ask Parliament to do what it can to end the evil which so far it has condoned."
Let me quote a letter from a Kentish Conservative lady. She said:
As a Conservative I write on behalf of the Conservatives. In our opinion the Government has no idea of the opposition throughout the country (but especially in country districts) first because of the continued use of gin traps, but far more because of the introduction of myxomatosis.
I make no apology tonight for my speech being emotional. It is not a crime to be emotional. What does matter is what one is emotional about and whether one's emotion is allowed to warp one's judgment.
Last Sunday I motored through Sussex to address a Socialist meeting, and for me the beauty of Belloc's county was marred and disfigured by swollen and dying rabbits on the road and by the roadside. One wondered what Hilaire Belloc of the "Four Men" would have said had he been alive today to witness the desecration of his favourite county. I wonder why our modern poets have not written something about this. Anyone who knew Bernard Shaw knows how he would have denounced the horror of the English countryside during the last 12 months.
Let me give the Committee some examples of what it is all about by reading extracts from some letters I have received.
Lanes almost unusable because of the stench of the putrid bodies of dead and dying rabbits in the surrounding woods and fields.

Small schoolchildren crying because they are continually confronted with the sight of blinded rabbits covered with bleeding sores.
I wonder what mother or teacher can explain to the little children what we have been doing to rabbits this year.
House windows have to be closed before food can be prepared or eaten because of the swarms of blowflies.
Cats and dogs bringing dead or dying rabbits into the house.
A housewife asks:
If myxomatosis is harmless to humans, why is it that we are told not to eat the rabbits?
A veterinary surgeon spent his summer holiday this year shooting rabbits. He wrote:
Although my work is dealing with diseased or wounded animals, I can't stand the sight of myxomatosis. It's a wicked business.
A farm worker, after a day's hard work in the field, joins nightly the R.S.P.C.A. mercy squads which go out shooting dying rabbits. He says:
It's a terrible sight. You'd never believe it unless you'd seen it and if you'd seen it you'd never forget it.
Another man writes to say that he went into a wood after a diseased and limping rabbit, but he could not kill it. He said:
I had to leave it. The wood was full of dead and dying rabbits. I had to come out. The smell was so awful…and the flies…
In a broadcast on 12th October, Mr. Maxwell Knight grimly prophesied that farmers who were now paying £10 or £20 for a pair of infected rabbits will, in four or five years, be paying the same for a couple of healthy rabbits. I think that Mr. Maxwell Knight is wrong about the prospect of exterminating rabbits, and I shall have something to say about it in a moment. The Kent County Council has warned hop pickers this autumn not to touch dead or dying rabbits.
During the Second Reading debate I said that although the gin trap is cruel, by law already we prevent the death agony of the trapped rabbit from lasting for more than 24 hours. This Bill, ultimately, will mean the end of the gin trap. I was encouraged by the previous debate today, in which the whole Committee agreed and concentrated its attention upon the need to get rid of the gin trap as quickly as possible, simply because we all object to this cruel method of killing rabbits. But if we are going to eliminate the gin trap, we are straining


at a gnat and swallowing a camel if we allow myxomatosis to continue to exist, or refuse to take any action to minimise its spread.
By law we say that a rabbit in a gin trap shall not suffer pain for more than 24 hours, but it takes 10 days for a rabbit to die of myxomatosis. We cannot allow the Bill which humanises rabbit-killing to go through without attempting to treat people who deliberately spread myxomatosis as we propose to treat those who use the gin trap after it is made illegal. Our simple case for the new Clause is that needless cruelty is a wicked thing. Blake thought that heaven grew angry when it saw a bird imprisoned in a cage, and Jesus said that not a sparrow falls to the ground but our Heavenly Father knows about it. What would Blake have written about myxomatosis in our green and pleasant land, and what must God think of what we have allowed to happen to our animals this year?
The Minister has declared that he is against the wilful spreading of myxomatosis. It is no use dwelling upon the past and saying that he should have taken action 12 months ago. The past is past. I ask the Committee to accept the new Clause, so that we may show that we acknowledge an evil thing to be an evil thing and are seeking to stop the wilful spreading of this disease.
The Minister's advisory committee says—I paraphrase simply what the Minister told us on Second Reading"— Leave the disease alone; let anybody who will take a diseased and tortured animal into an uninfected area; do not try to stop him." What are the advisory's committee's reasons for this attitude, as given to us by the Minister? First, that the disease is so widespread that it is too late to do anything about it, and that anything we did to stop anyone from spreading it would not stop the disease from spreading.
I suggest that this argument is as falsely and attractively specious as that put forward by those who say that Civil Defence is no good because the hydrogen bomb is so terrifically potent, who say we should not provide first-aid treatment for casualties or attempt protection from fire and the rest because of the overwhelming, earthquakelike nature of the hydrogen bomb.
Despite the wide ravages of myxomatosis it is not yet universal. I know it exists in every county; but it does not exist in every corner of every county; and if we can prevent it from reaching an uncontaminated corner of Britain we should do so. I hear that it has reached this week a Scottish island, and I am certain it could not have reached that Scottish island unless it had been taken there.
We care for the hopelessly sick; we rescue from a burning building one solitary family treasure out of the holocaust. It is in that spirit that I ask the Committee to accept a new Clause which cannot prevent myxomatosis, which cannot do anything about the catastrophe we have had in the country in the last 12 months, but which can do something to protect odd corners of the country. Perhaps the Levite who walked by on the other side justified his walking by by saying, "Poor wounded fellow, he was too far gone to help anyway."
The second Ministerial argument, the second argument of the advisory committee is that anyhow we cannot catch the culprits, and let us not legislate against the wilful spreading of myxomatosis unless we can enforce the law. As a layman I find that does not much appeal to me. How about murder? Some people may remember the intelligence test which professed to give the table showing the decline in the number of undetected murders. Poisoning is one of the hardest kinds of murder to discover, and because of that is regarded as about the worst kind of murder.
We may not find the men who buy diseased rabbits to infect others. We can at least make the attempt, and we may find some. We can at least discourage the evil by labelling it as a crime. We can use the great moral sanction of the law. In addition to its physical punishments, the law has a great moral sanction, and some people will not do a thing because they know the law says it should not be done.
At any rate, we should divorce ourselves from the present position in which the wilful spreading of myxomatosis is in no way an offence, in which, indeed, one can almost say it is connived at. Parliament can fairly and firmly say, "This is where we stand on the wilful spreading of myxomatosis. We think it is


morally wrong. We think it is beastly, and for our part we enlist the law in an attempt to prevent this disease from being wilfully spread."
9.15 p.m.
I believe that there are very few people in the House, and possibly in the country, today who approve of the wilful spreading of myxomotasis. Many who calmly accepted it in the days before its effects were known now realise how wicked it is. Some of my hon. Friends have said, "A year ago I should not have supported such a Clause, but I shall vote for it today because I have seen myxomatosis in action."
What is most bitter and most ironical of all is that it now seems to be clear that myxomatosis will not exterminate the rabbits. Speaker after speaker on Second Reading, including the Minister, admitted this. Already in Australia they have admitted that it will not exterminate the rabbits. Indeed, earlier this evening we heard suggestions that in parts of the country myxomatosis is increasing the number of rabbits because trappers are not trapping rabbits, as people are afraid of eating diseased rabbits.
My hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) has told us that he has heard that there are discoveries which suggest that myxomatosis increases the fertility of rabbits and that the rabbits which survive attacks of myxomatosis may produce bigger and better rabbits in the future. So that all this cruelty, all this beastliness, has not even the justification that it will wipe out the rabbits.
I am glad that the Dean of Winchester has set out what he believes and what I believe is the Christian view on this matter—and we are a Christian country. In war we seek to destroy our enemies just as surely as this Bill seeks to make scientific war on the rabbits, but we have laws of war. It is true that they are cruel laws; it is true that they are not always observed. But what is it that we hold against the Nazis? Not that the Germans fought us in the last war on the battlefield, but that at Belsen little children were tortured to death, at Auschwitz old men and women were tortured to death, and just because the Nazis regarded the Jews as inferior creatures, as we regard the rabbit.
Let us have a Geneva convention in our rabbit war. If we excel all other animals in our scientific might, let us use that giant strength decently and cleanly. We remember how shocked we were when the Communists charged us with having used bacteriological warfare in Korea. I suggest that we should accept this new Clause and end bacteriological warfare against the rabbits. Let us kill them by all means, but let us do the job decently and cleanly.

Mr. Amory: It might be as well if I made an observation or two at this point. I think we are all at one in agreeing that myxomatosis is a horrible disease; I do not think there is anything between us on that point. As the Committee knows, from the start the Government did their best to contain this disease, and we have made it very clear that we are strongly opposed to the deliberate spreading of it.
The limited question which we are considering this evening is whether it is wise to make the deliberate spreading of the disease a criminal offence. There are two considerations. First, the disease has already spread far and wide and is not likely now to be stamped out. It will remain with us. There is no doubt that from now onwards deliberate action is unlikely to have any significant effect on the future course of the disease. The second consideration is that if it is made an offence, it will not be an easy matter to enforce. The action required deliberately to transmit infection is very easy. In general, I believe that legislation where it is unlikely that enforcement will be effective is bad legislation.
The advice which the Myxomatosis Advisory Committee gave us on the two occasions when it considered this matter was to the effect that no good purpose would be served by making it an offence. Certainly, from the administrative point of view, that seemed to me to be sensible at that time, and it still does. On the other hand, I am impressed by the strength of feeling shown by hon. Members of the Committee and by others that something more should be done to discourage the deliberate spreading of the disease than by a statement of the Government's disapprobation.
I have been trying to find a suitable way, short of making it an offence, with the difficulties of enforcement, of setting the formal seal of disapproval on the


practice, and if possible finding some practical deterrent. I admit that I have not been successful. But so that there shall be no doubt whatever about our attitude to this practice, and to meet the sincerely held views of many hon. Members who, I realise, are reflecting the views of a wide section of public opinion, I am glad to tell the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) that I am asking the Committee to agree to this new Clause, which the Government are willing to accept.
I am not quite sure how effective the exact words which the hon. Member has chosen will prove to be on close examination. It may be that we shall find that there is something wrong with the wording. If that is so, he will, I am sure, have no objection to my introducing some drafting Amendments on the Report stage.
I hope, as I am sure, the mover and supporters of this new Clause hope, that the moral effect of the very definite provision which we are making in the Bill will be such that there will be no transgressions, and, therefore, that any fears which I may have had on the administrative side as to the difficulties of enforcement will not arise.

Mr. Champion: We on this side of the Committee thank the right hon. Gentleman for his action in this matter. He has been forthcoming and has accepted the point of view put by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King). This is a considerable victory for those who look at this matter from the humanitarian point of view. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test asked for the most distinguished support, and he has had the most affective support of the Minister himself. We should thank those hon. Members who supported the new Clause and brought it before the Committee.

Sir T. Moore: I am sure that I am speaking for every one of my colleagues on this side of the Committee in expressing our sincere and warm gratitude to the Minister for so readily sensing the feelings of hon. Members here and of many people outside. I had no doubt whatever that the Minister would accept the new Clause, because I was quite convinced that he and his colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary, were just as

much in favour of it as anyone else in the Committee.
Of course, we have heard about administrative difficulties. Well, all difficulties can be overcome, especially when there is the will to do so, and we have seen the will in the Minister tonight. I had prepared a most impassioned and shattering speech which I thought would sway any lingering doubts which the Minister might have, and it is with the greatest possible pleasure that I can now tear it up.

Mr. Hayman: As one who put his name to the new Clause, I should like to say how grateful I am to the Minister for accepting it, as are all the 126,000 people who signed the Petition which I presented to the House last week. There has been a tremendous feeling throughout the country at the spread of this disease, and I can say quote honestly that if I had been asked to support this new Clause in July I would not have done it. But the terrible experiences in Cornwall during recent weeks has moved me to take the line I did, and I am quite sure that the Committee and the country generally will wish to thank the Minister for his humane understanding of the problem.

Mr. Gerald Williams: I had very grave doubts about this new Clause being accepted when I put my name to it, but I have been associated with the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) in other humane causes. I am now able to tear up the speech I was going to make and I should like to add my thanks to the Minister for accepting this Clause. Even though he says he believes it might be too late and may not do much good, nevertheless I hope a little good will be done that will arouse the conscience of those concerned about this disease.

Dr. King: I waited before I attempted to address the Committee for the second time in order that hon. Members on both sides who were to support the Clause in what we thought would be a long debate, might have an opportunity of expressing their thanks to the Minister, thanks which I share and which, I hope, will be shared by everybody in the country. This is by no means a party issue, and the Minister has done what we expected him to do after the humane way he has met us and


again when he was Minister of Pensions and National Insurance. I have only one regret, and that is that had I known that the Minister was to join in this debate so early in the terms in which he did, I would have torn up my speech and the Committee would have been saved that much. The Minister's speech is what matters.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Schedule.—(ENACTMENTS REPEALED.)

Amendment made: In page 12, line 11, at end, add:


10 &amp; 11 Geo. 6. c. 48.
The Agriculture Act, 1947.
Subsection (5) of section ninety-eight.


11&amp; 12 Geo. 6. c. 45.
The Agriculture (Scotland) Act, 1948.
Subsection (4) of section thirty-nine.


—[Mr. Amory.]

Schedule, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, to be considered Tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill 160.]

NATIONAL GALLERY AND TATE GALLERY BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee. [Progress, 5th November.]

[Sir RHYS HOPKIN MORRIS in the Chair]

Clause 4.—(POWERS OF LENDING EXERCISABLE BY NATIONAL GALLERY TRUSTEES AND TATE GALLERY TRUSTEES.)

9.28 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Nicolson: I beg to move, in page 3, line 15, after "hundred," to insert:
or exceeds in value twenty thousand pounds in the case of works of art loaned to exhibitions abroad, or five thousand pounds in the case of works of art loaned to official residences.
Whenever I have been able to intervene in this debate I have attempted to persuade my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to introduce into the Bill greater clarification of the type of picture which the trustees of the Tate and National Galleries may loan to exhibitions abroad or to our embassies. I have so far not

been very successful, but I hope that in the concluding stages this evening I and other hon. Members may pursuade my hon. Friend to accept some of our suggestions.
9.30 p.m.
My reasons are three. First, I think that a Bill of this sort should embody the intentions of Parliament so that they will be as clear in 20 or 50 years' time as they are to us today. Secondly, we should guard our national treasures against the excesses of future trustees who may be less scrupulous than the trustees of today. In the third place, I believe it is our duty to put into the hands of the present and future trustees certain safeguards against the exorbitant demands of the Ministry of Works or of foreign exhibitors. The best way that we can do that is to arm them with the most effective answer of all, namely, an Act of Parliament which specifically forbids them to loan our best pictures abroad.
The Bill has come to us from another place in a rather strange state, and this applies particularly to Clause 4. Under pressure in another place, the Government agreed to insert one or two modifications and clarifications of their original intentions. We have, for instance, the date 1700. which was under discussion when we last debated the Bill, and we have one or two indications to the trustees that they should give particular care to fragility and the possibility of damage to certain pictures before agreeing to loan them abroad. If the Government have agreed to introduce these modifications, they should go a little further. As far as I have been able to discover, the trustees themselves are not at all happy about being given such very wide powers.
A short time ago, several Members on both sides of the Committee received a memorandum which was sent to us anonymously but dealt in great detail with the Clauses of the Bill which we are now discussing. I and many other hon. Members happen to know who wrote the memorandum, but, obviously, it would be improper for me to give his name here. All I can say is that it was written by a man who fully represents the point of view of those experts who know a great deal more about our paintings than any of us here knows and who, perhaps, care even more about them.
In support of my Amendment, I should like to read a short extract from the memorandum:
It is to be hoped that the Government will seriously consider accepting limitations which might go some way towards meeting the present Trustees' justifiable dislike of these powers and also the anxiety felt by informed public opinion. With a little more goodwill, it should be simple enough to amend the Bill in order to cover this important point.
My Amendment is just one way in which these limitations might be introduced, Other ways will be proposed by other hon. Members during the evening. The proposal which I have in mind would make it impossible for any picture above a certain value to be loaned to a foreign exhibition or for any picture above a slightly lower value to go to any of our embassies or residences abroad.
It is obviously right that the better, and, therefore, the more valuable, pictures should be loanable to the galleries and exhibitions abroad and that loans to embassies and residences should be confined to the less valuable pictures.
The intention of the whole Committee, if I have it rightly, is that our masterpieces should not be loaned abroad. I propose to insert my new words in such a way that it will still be possible for masterpieces above the values which I have mentioned to be loaned if the Treasury and Parliament consent to it. For instance, it would be possible for the National Gallery, if it so wished, to lend its famous Giorgione to the Giorgione Exhibition to be held in Venice next summer.
I will anticipate one objection to the Amendment. I know I shall be told that it is very difficult for any valuer of pictures to put a price upon a painting and that the value of paintings in monetary terms is apt to vary even from year to year as the popularity of the particular painter waxes or wanes. I know that that is true; but this is the point which I wish to emphasise.
I want to protect the great masterpieces by this Amendment, and their value does not wax or wane, and will certainly not sink down to the figures of £20,000 or £5,000 which I have suggested in the Amendment. Usually, the value of pictures rises rather than falls. The art critics may decide that a painter whom

they have hitherto regarded as second-rate is first-rate, and the value of his pictures may soar even above the values which I have particularly mentioned.
Mistakes will be made. Valuations will be wrong. The trustees may even find themselves handicapped by the Clause. All that is perfectly true; but if we do not put this safeguard in the Bill there will be no indication whatever that we, as a House of Commons, are unwilling to allow our pictures of exceptional value to go abroad for one purpose or another. Do not let us risk these pictures to the fallible memory and unpredictable judgments of future trustees of the Tate and National Galleries; let us fortify the trustees, present and future, against all but the most modest and reasonable demands of the galleries and the Ministry of Works.

Mr. Hector Hughes: The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson), at the end of his speech, put his finger upon what seems to be the real difficulty. I approve of the idea behind his Amendment but there is a real difficulty in its practical application.
The hon. Member began by saying that he wished to make the Clause more definite than it is. The phrase "the year seventeen hundred" is as definite as one could wish anything to be; but the hon. Member proceeds to add something which is indefinite. He proposes that the pictures which exceed in value £20,000 —in the case of exhibitions abroad—and £5,000—in the case of official residences —should be dealt with in a certain way.
The practical question is how the values are to be arrived at, and when they are to be arrived at. Are they to be calculated as at the time the picture was painted or at the present time? How and when are they to be calculated? For it to be clear and conclusive, it would be necessary for the Committee to put into the Clause some indication of the machinery to be employed to arrive at the value, and the time when the value is to be calculated. I should like to see an Amendment such as this embodied in the Clause, but it seems to me that the way in which the hon. Gentleman proposes to do it is not really the practical way.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): I think we all have a good deal of sympathy with the generality of the purpose which my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson) has in mind, and if the trustees decided to make some such rule as this for their own guidance, I am sure that neither this Committee nor the Government would disapprove.
I must, however, make these two points. First, it seems to me unnecessary to write into the Bill safeguards against the trustees doing things which they might well themselves consider it indiscreet to do. One must credit the trustees with a considerable degree of discretion; otherwise, they would not hold their positions. For that reason, I have indicated that I am not anxious to write into the Bill any further limitations unless they concern matters of public interest which the trustees might not themselves be the best persons to decide. As the trustees are charged with the duty of looking after the pictures, they will surely have in their own minds just the kind of safeguarding conditions to which my hon. Friend has referred.
In addition, I am bound to say that there is, in the wording of the Amendment, exactly that kind of difficulty, to which the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes) has referred. This Amendment calls upon somebody to determine the current value of extremely valuable pictures, and there might be a considerable margin of difference of opinion on that subject. We might get into complicated arguments about the proper interpretation or the proper application of a form of words in an Act of Parliament, and that, I am sure will be something making the task more difficult for everybody.
I should like also to suggest to my hon. Friend that, if we were to put in these words here, it might suggest that Parliament desired very special, even predominating, attention to be given to these conditions, but, of course, there are other conditions that are important—the condition of the picture, the suitability of the picture to travel, the importance of a particular picture being accessible to the British public, and so forth.
For all these reasons, I must advise the Committee that, in the view of the Government, it would not improve the Bill to insert these words, and I think it is only fair to say that I have received no suggestion from the trustees of either gallery that they would wish to be protected from the Ministry of Works or the Treasury by such words as these. I should like to remind the Committee that, in Clause 4 as it stands, it is the trustees who have the last word on any suggested loan, and that neither the Ministry of Works, the Treasury nor anybody else can compel the trustees to lend pictures which they do not wish to lend.
In these circumstances, I hope I have satisfied my hon. Friend that I have given attention to his purpose, but that I do not think that this would be the right way of achieving it.

Mr. N. Nicolson: I do not want to divide the Committee against the advice of my hon. Friend, and I will not do so, but there was one flaw in his argument, if I may put it like that, which I do not quite understand, but which will be of great relevance to the debate on other Amendments. He suggested that the trustees, being trustworthy, did not need advice from the House of Commons. What, I then ask him, is the object of subsections (2) and (4, a and b) of the Clause? Surely they are there partly to give instruction and partly to give advice to the trustees, and to give them some security against the pressure and the blandishments of the Ministry of Works, and so on.
9.45 p.m.
I am only suggesting inserting a provision exactly in tune with what is already in the Bill. Later, other hon. Members will suggest provisions of a similar type. I see the force of the argument about the difficulty of valuation, but it does not undercut my main argument, which I shall advance in another way on a later Clause, if I catch the eye of the Chairman. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. H. Brooke: I beg to move, in page 3, line 18, at the end, to insert:
(3) The number of paintings or other works of art which are at any time on loan under


paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of this section shall not exceed—

(a) in the case of the National Gallery, one-twentieth of the total number of works of art then vested in the Trustees of that Gallery, and
(b) in the case of the Tate Gallery, one-tenth of the total number of works of art then vested in the Trustees of that Gallery,
but the Treasury may from time to time by order increase or reduce either of the fractions mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs.
An order under this subsection shall be made by statutory instrument a draft of which has been laid before Parliament, and an order increasing either of the said fractions shall not be made unless the draft has been approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
I move this manuscript Amendment in rather special circumstances. Copies of this Amendment have been available in the Vote Office for some hours, and I took special steps to make sure that they were in the hands of some hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. It may be for the convenience of the Committee if we were to discuss at the same time the two Amendments on the same subject in the name of the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) in page 3, line 21, at the end, to insert:
Provided that, at any given time, such loans shall not exceed thirty in the case of the National Gallery, or one hundred and twenty in the case of the Tate Gallery.
and, in page 3, line 21, at the end, to insert:
Provided that, at any given time, such loans from either Gallery shall not exceed in number one-twentieth part of the total number of oil paintings belonging to that Gallery.
I would include also the Amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson), in page 3, line 30, at the end, to insert:
(c) that not more than one hundred and twenty works of art shall be absent from the Tate Gallery, and not more than thirty from the National Gallery, at any one time.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: The hon. Gentleman was good enough to let us see advance copies of the manuscript Amendment. We have considered it, and we are willing that the Amendments that he has just mentioned should be considered with the one that he has moved.

Mr. Brooke: I am very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I very

much dislike moving a manuscript Amendment in connection with the first Bill of which I have had charge, but the circumstances are rather special. Up to today, the second Amendment in the name of the right hon. Gentleman, in page 3, line 21, had not appeared. It appeared on the Notice Paper this morning and as soon as I saw it I considered it very carefully.
I have been able to judge by the debates we had here last Friday that this type of question was one to which hon. and right hon. Members on both sides attached importance. I had made up my mind that the first Amendment to Clause 4, page 3, line 21 was too restricted and inflexible and I was bound to resist it. However, when I saw this morning the second Amendment, it seemed to me to suggest a much more practical way of seeing whether we could arrive at an arrangement that would be generally satisfactory and would meet the varying views which had been foreshadowed during our Friday debate. I could not accept the new Amendment as it stood, and that is why I have taken the exceptional step of moving the manuscript Amendment which, in fact, embodies the first part of the Amendment on the Notice Paper and makes the other part of it. I hope, more workable and more useful.
If I may examine the starred Amendment and my own together, they both agree that loans from the National Gallery should be limited to one-twentieth of the total number of works in that gallery. For the information of the Committee, the total number there is about 1,800, and, therefore, one-twentieth would permit the loan of about 90 works. The present number on loan is 34 and I have taken over the suggested figure of one-twentieth from the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman.
In the case of the Tate Gallery, if his Amendment had been accepted as it stood, certain difficulties would have arisen. His Amendment suggested limitation to one-twentieth part of the total number of oil paintings belonging to each gallery. In fact, the number of oil paintings in the Tate Gallery is about 2,600, and, in addition, there are about 1,600 other works which fall outside the definition.
I hope I carry the Committee with me in suggesting that if we are to have any limitation at all, it is more desirable to


have an overall limitation for all the works rather than to single out any one category and leave the rest free.

Mr. Kenneth Robinson: One of the considerations which led us to use the term "oil paintings" was that we understood that water colours were never lent. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will confirm that this is the case?

Mr. Brooke: Perhaps I may continue my argument, indicating the way in which my mind worked when I was trying to recast the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman into what seemed a helpful form.
The total number of works in the Tate Gallery is about 4,200 and at present about 7 per cent of those are out on loan. The percentage presented in the starred Amendment was 5 per cent.—5 per cent. of oil paintings. It occurred to me that if there were 7 per cent. already out on loan and if we wished to extend the lending powers, provided we can do so without running risks, it would be anomalous to put into this Bill a percentage less than the 7 per cent. out already. For that reason my manuscript Amendment suggests that in the case of the Tate Gallery it should be lawful for one-tenth of the total number of works in the gallery to be out on loan.
My Amendment adds this further point, designed solely to give flexibility. We have to bear in mind that it may be another 20 years or more before the House is next legislating on the galleries. Over the past 90 years the average has been somewhat worse than 20-year intervals. Therefore, I suggest that it is desirable to insert some power of flexibility in case of need. The manuscript Amendment would empower the Treasury, by order, to alter those fractions either up or down, but if there was an alteration up—that is to say, a further extension of the lending powers—it would require an affirmative Resolution of the House.
May I give the Committee the kind of hypothetical circumstances in which we all might wish to alter one of these fractions? It is possible—and I am putting this purely as a hypothetical case —that, in the next 20 or 25 years, a new "Lancaster House" might pass into the possession of the Government. It might

be suitable to hang in it pictures from the National collection and to make them available to the public. If that occurred, it would be exceedingly aggravating if the National Gallery trustees were to report that they were frustrated by Act of Parliament from hanging pictures, which would otherwise be in their cellars, in that house. In those circumstances—and I hope I carry the Committee with me in the suggestion that this is a practical way of tackling it—it would be possible, if this manuscript Amendment is accepted, for the Treasury to make an order, and for the Government to ask for an affirmative Resolution from both Houses of Parliament to confirm it, so that the lending powers would be extended.
I apologise to the Committee for having sprung on it something which was not on the Notice Paper, but I think that it will be appreciated that it is entirely because it was not until this morning that I had the opportunity to see the starred Amendment from which all this has emerged. My trust is that the plan will, in general, commend itself to the Committee. I think that I have, in my remarks, covered the other Amendments which are on the Notice Paper. I feel certain that, if we are to insert these limitations at all, it is better done by way of percentage than by way of fixed figures, and that, for the reasons which I have given, it would be a pity if there were no flexibility at all.
In conclusion, may I pick up a point which was made about inserting limitations. It seems to me that in a case like this, it is not unreasonable to write a limitation into the Bill, because here we are expressing the will of Parliament as to the number of pictures that should be out at any time. The previous Amendment, where I resisted writing words into the Bill, was on a subject that was essentially within the judgment of the trustees. They can decide better than we can which pictures should be lent. I submit that it is perfectly reasonable, and no interference with the discretion of the trustees in that sense, to put into the Bill an arithmetical limitation of this sort.
I apologise for the length of this explanation but, the matter being somewhat complicated, I wished to make it as clear as I could to the Committee.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I say immediately that, so far as this side of the Committee is concerned, we do not feel that the hon. Gentleman has anything at all for which to apologise. Nor do we find any fault with what he termed the length of his explanation. Were all speeches as short, I think that the business of the House would progress much more rapidly than it frequently does.
What this Amendment does is to amend Clause 4 (1, b). Perhaps I may briefly remind the Committee what that paragraph does. It gives the trustees power to lend pictures or works of art
for display—
in a public building or official residence…for the furnishing of which the Minister of Works is responsible;
and
in the official residence of the Governor of a colony.
10.0 p.m.
It was felt, certainly on this side of the Committee, and I gather also by the hon. Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson), who also has on the Paper an Amendment on this point, that some sort of limitation should be placed on the number of pictures which might be on loan from the two galleries at any one time. My hon. Friends and I therefore put down Amendments which we thought necessary, and which we felt at the time would be the best way of achieving this purpose.
In the last day or so an hon. Friend of mine—I do not want to take credit for it—thought that a percentage basis would perhaps be an even better way of achieving our object than the way we first thought of. Accordingly, we put down the starred Amendment to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. I am glad that we did so, because apparently it helped him to make up his mind, and as a result we now have the Amendment which he has moved.
We consider that his new Amendment meets practically all the points which we wanted covered. It gives the galleries elbow room and elasticity as they grow and the number of pictures there increases. It also gives publicity to the loans that are made. Thus it gives the safeguards which we think essential.

Therefore, without saying any more, I should like to indicate that my hon. Friends and I welcome the manuscript Amendment. We congratulate the hon. Gentleman on it and we wholeheartedly accept it.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: I want to talk about the last paragraph of this Amendment. It lays down that a fraction set out in the Amendment can be altered by an affirmative Resolution. I cannot see why that calls for an affirmative Resolution instead of the negative procedure. There is an increasing tendency among draftsmen in every Department to provide that instruments shall be the subject of affirmative Resolutions rather than negative Resolutions, and the only effect is that Parliament will become more and more clogged and overworked. I should like to know why my hon. Friend thought it necessary to include the affirmative procedure in this proposed new subsection. The negative procedure would do just as well, and I ask my hon. Friend to substitute it.

Mr. H. Brooke: I hope that my hon. Friend will acquit the draftsmen. These words were drafted on my instructions, and the reason is this. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was able to sit through the whole of our proceedings on Friday, as some of us did, but I think that those who were present on that occasion were aware that one of the points constantly made in the debate was that we should not lightly jettison all Parliamentary control over lending. Indeed, the whole purpose of Clause 4 is to produce a kind of statutory framework within which the lending can take place.
In the light of that discussion, it struck me that it might not be at all acceptable to the Committee if, at a later stage, the lending powers of the trustees could be considerably enlarged beyond the fractions set out in my Amendment, without Parliament having the full control which the affirmative procedure gives. That was my reason, and it was not because I wanted to waste Parliamentary time, but because as this was a non-party Bill on which different views were expressed in different parts of the House, I was anxious to try and find a solution that might meet the views of as many hon. Members as possible.

Mr. Nicholson: Is it too late to canvass opinion on both sides of the House? As a matter of Parliamentary principle, I beseech my hon. Friend to bear in mind that the negative procedure is fully effective. In an endeavour to save the time of the House in future, I beg him to reconsider this.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I rather join with my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) on this, more particularly as last week I moved an Amendment to make subsection (4) of the previous Clause subject to a negative Resolution and not an affirmative one. I decided then, with the current experience of the very heavy business of this House, that it was quite unnecessary to bring an affirmative Resolution before the House to carry out the effects of Clause 3. I did not get much of a reply on that point.
Let me say, in passing, that I welcome the substance of my hon. Friend's Amendment as much as does the right hon. Gentleman for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall). If we look at subsection (2) of the Clause we see that a negative Resolution is provided for in the cases where the trustees are asked to lend pictures for exhibition and display and are perhaps reluctant to do so. Then the Treasury intervenes, suggesting that the lending is advisable and, by an order contained in a Statutory Instrument, endorses the loan. In that case, endorsement of the loan is brought before Parliament in a negative Resolution.
In this same subsection we are told that where it is decided that a higher percentage of pictures from either the National Gallery or the Tate Gallery shall be loaned abroad—other than what is provided for in the Bill—that decision shall be brought before Parliament for an affirmative Resolution. It seems a bit ridiculous that the same subsection should have provisions pointing both ways.
I must warmly congratulate my hon. Friend for the celerity and dispatch with which he has looked at the Amendment on the Notice Paper this morning. In bringing himself to the point of agreeing with the Committee at such a late stage in these proceedings, when the Bill still has to go to another place for endorsement, he has treated the Committee with great courtesy and considera-

tion. Yet, I do not think that the thinking has been entirely consistent. I therefore welcome what my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham has said and very much hope that, even at this late hour, the Financial Secretary will try to bring the processes in these Clauses into line and agree that the whole thing should be done by negative Resolution.

Dr. Barnett Stross: I hope that the Financial Secretary will not give way on this matter, because we are not all in agreement upon it. There is a very great difference between the use of the negative Resolution and the procedure which we are now discussing. It means a change in principle.
I can give a short example of what I mean. If the limit were to be raised upward because another building had been found which could house some of these treasures, and if that building should happen to be this Palace of Westminster, surely both houses would wish to consider the matter in the manner already provided? It would not be suitable to have it referred to merely by means of a negative Resolution.
I think that, on the whole, the Committee does not agree with the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) or his noble Friend, and I hope that the Financial Secretary will accept that that is what most of us feel.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: I beg to move, in page 3, line 33, at the end, to insert:
Provided that no picture on loan shall be absent from the gallery buildings or from public exhibitions elsewhere than in the United Kingdom for more than five years in every fifteen years.
This Amendment is concerned with the length of time which a loaned picture may be out of either of the galleries. This is a question upon which hon. Members on this side of the Committee feel very keenly, and I believe some hon. Members opposite feel the same. It was a matter which gave rise to a debate in the other place.
I think it is generally agreed that the main purpose of our picture collections, especially that in the National Gallery, is to form in one centre an assembly of pictures which can be viewed by the public —artists, students, writers and all those


who take a special interest in this art—and that that collection should be there, ready and available for the people to view whenever they want to do so. I think it is also generally agreed that this function of a public gallery is particularly fortunately expressed in our National Gallery collection, for it possesses a comprehensive and unique array of pictures showing the history of Western painting.
We are also agreed that these galleries should, whenever proper lend some of these pictures either for particular exhibitions or for purposes which have been mentioned, and that the trustees should be empowered to lend such pictures as they think fit. The question arises whether there should be some limitation upon the time for which a picture should be absent from the parent gallery, during which time those who are especially anxious to see that picture would be deprived of doing so. It was suggested in another place that a picture should not be away for more than 10 years out of 30, but I feel that that period is far too long. My hon. Friends and I suggest that the limit should be five years and that, after five years, the picture should be returned to the gallery and should not be lent out again for a further period, so that it would never be out for more than five years out of 15.
My view is that a period of five years is really too long for a normal loan, and I put it as an absolute maximum. It is obvious that from the point of view of the gallery and those who enjoy these collections the pictures should not be away for too long, and it is also obvious that from the point of view of the temporary recipients of the pictures—whether they be galleries or embassies—they should not have the pictures for too long.
10.15 p.m.
It is more enjoyable for an ambassador in his embassy, or for visitors to the embassy, or for people who visit public art galleries, to have a change of pictures than to have the same pictures the whole time. It is for that reason in the interest of the recipient of a loaned picture not to have the picture for too long, but to return it and to ask for another from the National Gallery.
When I was Minister of Supply I found that the people living in the research stations of the Ministry, dotted all over

the country, situated usually in remote parts, had few if any cultural amenities. Scientists, engineers, senior officers, men of the highest intellectual standing, had to live and work in places where there was no decent picture at all in their dining rooms or common rooms or other recreation rooms where they spent most of their leisure time. Sometimes they would put up a coloured picture torn from a Christmas number of a weekly periodical.
One of the things I did during my tenure of office, and of which I am most proud, was this. It was a time of stringent economy, but I persuaded the Treasury to make a grant of £1,000 a year for a number of years to purchase pictures for those outposts where scientists and others lived. With that money a number of pictures were bought, pictures by living artists, mostly modern pictures. They were distributed to Harwell and such stations, on the basis that no station was to have a picture more than six months. So there was a permanent circulating library of pictures. That was to everybody's advantage. I think it was a good thing. It was popular.
I mention this in support of the argument that those who borrow pictures from either of the Galleries will not be in any way disadvantaged by my Amendment, and that, on the contrary, people will be advantaged if my proposal is accepted that any picture borrowed must be returned within a maximum of five years. I hope, therefore, that the Financial Secretary will see his way to accepting the Amendment.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: It appears to me as if the Amendment deals with pictures lent abroad, not to canteens in this country.

Mr. Strauss: It covers both.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: There are the words "elsewhere than in the United Kingdom."

Mr. Strauss: If the noble Lord reads the Amendment in the context of the Clause he will see that the Amendment would cover all loans. It is certainly intended to, and I think it does. If it is not clear, let me make clear that that is our intention.
The trustees would not be dissatisfied with such a limitation of their powers, because they do not want to lend pictures


for any great length of time anyway. I think that if they were told "You must not lend a picture for more than five years in any circumstances," they would not be displeased, because that provision would strengthen them in resisting the demands of some importunate Minister who in future might demand the loan of a picture for much longer.
I very much hope the Government will accept this proposition. If they are not able to accept the exact wording of the Amendment I hope that they will accept the principle involved, and provide for it in an equally effective though alternative way. I hope that the Financial Secretary, who has shown himself very sensitive to the demands made upon him, anxious to meet the views of those who have taken part in these debates and to agree to such safeguards as may be desirable or necessary, will agree to meet us in what we consider an all-important Amendment.

Mr. N. Nicolson: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman for clarification of his Amendment? If he looks at it again, he will see that it reads very strangely. It gives permission for pictures to be exhibited abroad for more than five years. Clearly he does not mean that; he means the opposite.
Assuming that that is the case, may I put a further question? Would he include pictures which were exhibited in Lancaster House? Strictly speaking, those pictures would be away from their parent gallery. Would he think it necessary to call such pictures, a quarter-of-a-mile away from the Tate Gallery, pictures which were away from their home? These pictures will probably be better exhibited in Lancaster House than in their original galleries and will be equally accessible to students.

Mr. Strauss: The suggestion of having Lancaster House as an extension to the National Gallery is a new and very desirable suggestion. If that principle is accepted, I see no reason why pictures should not be in Lancaster House, if it is part of the National Gallery, for much longer than five years. We are concerned with the principle of the dispersal of these pictures from London, possibly all over the world, for periods longer than five years.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I hope that the Government will not accept the

Amendment, which does not seem to me to make sense at all. The whole burden of the speech of the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) concerned the question of circulating pictures within canteens in this country, but if hon. Members read the Amendment with care they will see that it is confined entirely by the phrase
elsewhere than in the United Kingdom
to those pictures which are sent out of this country.
The only pictures which we are discussing under the Amendment are those which will be loaned by the National and Tate Galleries under Clause 4 (1, b) to be displayed
in a public building or official residence…for the furnishing of which the Minister of Works is responsible; or (ii) in the official residence of the Governor of a colony
or elsewhere abroad.
If we are dealing with pictures which are sent abroad, as I think we are, then I hope that on a fortiori grounds the Government will reject the Amendment. The present policy of the Minister of Works is to select with the greatest care pictures and works of art to send to embassies overseas and residences of colonial governors. Those are pictures which are attuned to the life of the country overseas or the Colony, as the case may be.
As I tried to indicate on a previous occasion, those pictures are meant to attract a great deal of attention to the inter-relationship between the life of that country or Colony and the life of the United Kingdom at a particular point in history. The pictures are sent there and are meant to remain there for a considerable time because they interest the nationals of the country or Colony concerned.
I cannot accept the idea that at the end of five years some ambassador or colonial governor must say to all his friends and to people who move in and out of the embassy or colonial residence, "My dear people, all the pictures and works of art which you have seen about my house for the last five years must, alas, leave me now owing to the fantastic Amendment introduced by the Socialist Opposition on 10th November, 1954." The Amendment makes absolute nonsense of the whole process envisaged in the Clause.
It vitiates the power of the galleries to lend pictures to the Ministry of Works and to contact ambassadors and colonial


governors as to the suitability of the works and as to whether they desire to have them returned or replaced by other works. It vitiates the whole power of the artistic machinery of this country to make loans which are suitable to these places, and renders nugatory the purpose of this Clause. I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman has understood the meaning of his Amendment, and I think that when he has really seen what it means, he will be willing to withdraw it.

Mr. Woodrow Wyatt: I think it rather odd that the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) should introduce this note of political controversy into our discussion after the amiable non-party debate on the matter which has been going on for some time. This is not a question of Socialism or Conservatism. We might claim that in our numerical attendance on this side of the Committee we are displaying more interest in and concern about art treasures than hon. Members opposite.
I am puzzled by my right hon. Friend's Amendment, and I should like him to clarify it, because on Friday be urged support of an Amendment—as I am glad he did—which would enable treasures left to the nation to be given to museums other than those listed in the Schedule, on the ground that they might be more appropriate for exhibition in, say, Birmingham than in the National Gallery or some other museum listed in the Schedule, and that there ought to be power for such pictures to be given to the appropriate local gallery.
He instanced some of his own pictures which he thought might be more suitable to the North of England, if he left them to the nation, than to the Tate Gallery or National Gallery. I agreed with him. The Government, in reply, said that they could not allow that Amendment to be carried because there was power on the part of the national museum concerned with the ownership of the pictures to make a more or less permanent loan of the pictures to museums outside London and outside the museums listed in the Schedule, which might be more appropriate for the housing of particular pictures. I thought that reasonable. The Government stuck by the decision that the ownership had to be permanently

vested in a national museum but that pictures could be lent almost permanently, in appropriate cases.
As I see it, unless my right hon. Friend can clarify his Amendment it means that even the power of semi-permanent or permanent loan which previously would have been there would be removed by the effect of his Amendment, and that instead of the pictures which he proposed to leave to the nation being allowed to reside in a museum permanently in the North of England, every five years they would have to be brought back.
Is that what he means? If not, I do not think he has worded the Amendment very clearly. If that is what he means I am against the Amendment. If he means that he does not want pictures to be left outside this country for more than five years at a stretch, I am in favour of that. I think that he ought to tell us what he means, because the Amendment is not very well drafted.

Mr. H. Brooke: We seem to be getting into some confusion not only about the colour of the Government but about the precise meaning of this Amendment. Perhaps I may be able to help the Committee best if I address my remarks not so much to the wording of this Amendment, which I quite agree, on careful examination, may be found to be exactly the opposite to what the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) suggested, but rather to the purpose which he had in mind. He was good enough towards the end of his speech to point out that he was not so concerned about any precise proposition as to finding some means of making sure that the policy inherent in the Amendment was the policy pursued.
10.30 p.m.
It may be of interest to the Committee to know what is the present practice of the Tate Gallery Trustees in this matter. In a statement on page 15 of their recently issued report, which has a distinct relevance to the matter which we are now discussing, they say that the trustees have
resolved that in future a definite term, not exceeding five years, should be set to all loans and that all the works which had already been on loan for longer than that period should be recalled.
They go on to indicate that they are proceeding with the recall of pictures which have already been out on loan for more than five years, in order to imple-


ment that policy which they have adopted. I understand that it is the practice of the National Gallery not to let pictures out on indefinite loan, and that whenever the trustees let a picture out, they set a term to the loan. The term varies according to the importance of the picture and the circumstances of the loan.
It seems to me that what we want to do is, so far as possible, to work with the trustees in this matter rather than impose restrictions which might suggest that in the past they had misused their powers. Moreover, I should like to give one or two technical reasons why an absolute limitation of five years in an Act of Parliament would create awkwardness. For example, arrangements might have been made to bring back a picture from a distance, and the ship in which it was carried might be delayed on the way; and the trustees would find themselves committing an offence because the picture was not back in London within the five-year limit.
Furthermore, as has been indicated in the debate, there are certain pictures which are peculiarly appropriate to certain capitals or buildings. It might be that a picture was nearing the end of its five-year period there, and because of some international event taking place in that capital it was particularly desirable that the picture should remain for a time longer and not be withdrawn because of this rigid rule. I want to give proper attention to the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion because, as I have pointed out, it is generally in line with the present practice of the trustees, and I should like to offer this suggested line of action, if it would satisfy the right hon. Gentleman and he would feel inclined, in those circumstances, to withdraw his Amendment.
When the Tate Gallery was first set up as a separate organisation in 1917, the basis of that organisation was a Treasury Minute. It was actually made at the time when the then Mr. Lloyd George was First Lord of the Treasury. It is clear that when this Bill receives the Royal Assent, that Treasury Minute must be withdrawn and a new Minute will be required. That new Minute will have to deal with the constitution and the method of appointment of the trustees, who attain their independent statutory existence for the first time under the Bill. It

will go on to deal with what I might call their terms of reference and to indicate such rules and matters of administration as the trustees or the Treasury, after consultation with the trustees, may wish to be included.
In view of the fact that the loan policy indicated in the Amendment, so far as the five-year period is concerned, is much in line with the present policy of the trustees, what occurs to me is that in the drafting of the Treasury Minute a passage might be inserted to indicate that the normal maximum period for any loan should be five years and that the five-year period should be exceeded only if special circumstances exist which render it desirable to apply exceptional treatment.
If that were done, the right hon. Gentleman might still say, "Might not the trustees cheat? Might they not get their picture back after five years, keep it in the collection over a week-end and then send if off for another five years?". I am certain that the trustees of neither gallery are, or ever would be, the kind of people who would cheat in that way.
However, it seems to me that what we all wish to happen is that when a picture returns from loan it should then remain in the collection in London for a due period before being lent again, so that the people who wish to see it here can do so. Hon. Members will agree that the period would vary according to the picture. There might be some pictures of great importance which, having been once lent, should never be lent again. There might be other pictures which had no great current interest here but were very much desired in some embassy or governor's residence abroad. In that case, it would be rather futile to retain them in London for 10 years, simply to comply with a set of words, if nobody was inquiring after them.
It strikes me that trustees must use their judgment as to the proper period for which a picture should be back in the collection, provided that it is fully understood that they will not be regarded as complying with the Treasury Minute or the purpose that has been expressed in the debate today if they just bring the picture back and then send it out again within a few days. When I say "a due period" I mean "a due period."
I have taken such steps as I could to ascertain what the trustees' views would be on this. I think I can assure the Committee that the trustees would in no way object to a Treasury Minute being drafted (which broadly embodied their present lending practice and the five-year period mentioned in the Amendment as the normal maximum limit, and I know I can give an assurance to the Committee that they would not wish in any way to get round that. Those are the lines on which it occurs to me that we might solve this difficult problem.
One further point is that Treasury Minutes are sometimes rather ungetatable documents. I discovered that the other day when the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) asked me Questions about a Treasury Minute of 1874; I had to dig out an enormous volume. In this case, it is clearly desirable that members of the public and Members of the House of Commons should be able to discover what is happening and what has been done.
I suggest, therefore, that some hon. or right hon. Gentleman might feel disposed, at a suitable time after the passing of the Bill, to address a Question to me asking whether the Treasury Minute has been made, and if it has been made by then I will gladly arrange for the full text of it to be given in reply to the Question and printed in HANSARD. As to the future, I cannot bind my successors completely, but at any rate I can say for this Government that it would be the intention to bring to the notice of Parliament any material change made by any future amendments of the Treasury Minute.
In that way, the House would be kept informed of what was happening, and the trustees of both Galleries would year by year, in their annual reports, describe the ways in which they were exercising their lending powers. If there were need, Questions could be asked in the House of Commons, and there could be debates. In some such manner as this, we might secure the general proposition that the right hon. Gentleman is seeking, while retaining the flexibility which I am sure is desirable.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his speech, which did not

come altogether as a surprise to me. It indicated the spirit in which we have discussed the Bill last Friday and today, with one small lapse by the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) a few moments ago. I agree with the criticism that the Amendment is ambiguous. It can be read in more ways than one, but the Financial Secretary understands what we had in mind when we put the Amendment down.
The Bill contains a number of safeguards. We do not object to them, and we have tried to strengthen them, but one safeguard is not there. For lending pictures abroad, often of the utmost value, great national heritages, no time limit is in the Bill. We think that that gap should be filled, but we are wedded to no particular method of filling it. Such pictures should not be on loan indefinitely overseas. If a loan is temporary, the picture must come back, but after 30 or 50 years a loan takes on the look of permanency. A time limit in the Bill would strengthen the hands of the trustees.
If, as the noble Lord said, the trustees lend a picture, and some guests at a governor's house abroad notice that a loaned picture has gone, he can easily indicate that it had to go back to the gallery from which it had come. These pictures are bought for the people of our country to see. When pictures are permanently or semi-permanently on loan, students and the British public cannot see them. We are anxious that something should be done to meet that point.
I should like to compliment the hon. Gentleman on the method he has chosen for meeting this difficulty. I agree that there are different kinds of Treasury Minutes. Some which deal with matters not of general interest never publicly see the light of day. The House of Commons and the public would be interested to see Treasury Minutes dealing with these pictures. It would, I gather, be acceptable to the trustees as it would give them a working rule to go by and the House would be kept informed of changes that were made. Some publicity will result when the Treasury Minute is issued, and the terms of reference and the regulations are laid down. If that is the correct reading of what the Financial Secretary suggested, we accept it.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Nicholson: I find myself rather out of sympathy with both Front Benches. There may be a certain danger in limiting too strictly the judgment of the trustees. It is perfectly obvious that the trustees will be carefully chosen men, and it is also obvious that many of the pictures referred to are never on exhibition in this country. They are in the cellars of the National Gallery and the Tate. I cannot see why a picture which has spent its life in the cellars of the National Gallery or the Tate should not be out of this country a good deal longer than five years.
I very much hope that the Financial Secretary will reconsider what he said and not hamper the trustees in this direction. Surely, they are sufficiently responsible people to use their own judgment. If there is a picture which lovers of art wish to see in this country, the trustees will, of course, recall it after a certain time has elapsed, but a second-or third-rate picture—and there are many such in the National Gallery—which is ornamental and decorative may look very well abroad, and the trustees should have full freedom to extend the period of the loan.

Mr. H. Brooke: I am not seeking in any sense to place restrictions on the trustees. The Tate Gallery trustees have placed a restriction on their own actions, and have reported it to the House and to the public. The National Gallery has never allowed an unlimited period of loan, and commonly the trustees have fixed a shorter period than five years for many of their loans. If public opinion should change, and if the trustees at some future date should feel that this is too short a period, the machinery which I described would come into play. There would be consultations, and, if it seemed generally acceptable, a new Treasury Minute would be made known to the public and the House, and discussions would take place thereupon.
I should like to assure my hon. Friend that the reason why I suggested the course of action which I did was that I felt certain that it would be consonant with the wishes of the trustees to proceed in that way, whereas if this House put restrictive words into an Act of Parliament which could not be altered except by passing another Act of Parliament, that would be a serious interference with

the actions of the trustees and might give rise to awkwardness.
I hope that, on reflection, my hon. Friend will feel that in this way we are retaining the desirable flexibility while implementing what, I think, is the general desire of the House that pictures should not go abroad for unlimited periods.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: In view of the Financial Secretary's reply, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. John Dugdale: I beg to move, in page 3, line 50, to leave out from "unless," to the second "the." in line 1, on page 4.
This Amendment should commend itself to the Government. Perhaps the Committee would like me to read out what the result would be if the Amendment were accepted. The subsection would read:
In the case of a picture or other work of art which has been given or bequeathed, the powers conferred by this section shall not be exercisable…in any manner inconsistent with any condition attached to the gift or bequest unless the donor or his personal representatives or the personal representatives of the testator, as the case may be, have consented to the exercise of those powers in that manner.
The object of the Amendment is to protect people who give pictures to our galleries.
It seems to me that it is unfair that anybody giving a picture to a gallery should know that it may suddenly, at any time, be used for some purpose different from his wishes. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary has a collection of pictures, but I do know that his right hon. Friend the Chancellor has. Suppose he were to give some of those pictures to the National Gallery or the Tate Gallery. As matters stand now, so far as I understand it, they might be lent for any purpose, whether he liked it or not.
The "Daily Herald" might decide to give an exhibition of pictures at Transport House—newspapers do that for publicity purposes—and the right hon. Gentleman's pictures would have to go to that exhibition whether he wanted it or not. That seems wrong, and there should be adequate protection, so that unless it is in accordance with the wishes of the


owner, his executors or those responsible, the pictures should not go elsewhere than where they were intended to go. To protect donors in this respect, I hope that the hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary will accept the Amendment.

Mr. H. Brooke: I think it is right and natural that this Amendment should have been moved, but I hope I shall be able to convince the right hon. Gentleman that the dangers are not as great as he fears. A provision of this character has been the law of the land for 71 years, and if he will look at Section 4 of the National Gallery (Loan) Act, 1883, which will be repealed by the Bill he will see there words which state:
…such pictures and works of art shall not be lent in pursuance of this Act until the expiration of twenty-five years from the date at which such pictures or works of art came into the possession of such trustees and director.

Mr. Dugdale: Against the wishes of the donors?

Mr. Brooke: Perhaps I can help by reading a little more:
…whether any such gift or bequest is made on condition that the articles so given or bequeathed should be kept together, or otherwise subject to a condition inconsistent with the same being lent, such pictures or works of art shall not be lent until the expiration of 25 years from the date on which such pictures or works of art came into the possession of such trustees and director.
I should not like to defend a Bill in 1954 solely because similar provisions have been on the Statute Book for 71 years. We might think that our predecessors had made a mistake, but I would like to assure the right hon. Gentleman that the words which he seeks to omit by his Amendment were carefully considered when the Bill was drafted. As words with a similar import had been the law of the land for more than 70 years it did seem reasonable to suppose that any testator or potential donor could have realised without difficulty, and certainly would have realised had he taken legal advice, that if he were thinking of making a gift or bequest to the galleries it would be subject to certain conditions, and that it was possible that, 25 years later, certain of his wishes might be overridden by the trustees.
That has been going on for 70 years, and I think that any pictures which are

likely henceforward to fall in under a will, will do so in conditions where the will has been made well after the year 1883. The testator will, therefore, have had reasonable opportunity to discover what was liable to happen under the 1883 Act. In other words, we are doing nothing more in this subsection than carrying on, in suitable language, the condition which has existed statutorily since 1883. I have not been aware, until now, of any strong objection to it. It seems to have been accepted as a reasonable provision in the public interest. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman will feel, on reflection, that in this respect, the Bill cannot reasonably be held to override the wishes of benefactors.

Mr. Dugdale: Not myself being a Conservative, I do not altogether agree with the principles adduced by the Financial Secretary. In spite of that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Michael Stewart): I wonder if the Financial Secretary could answer a very simple question. Probably all lawyers could answer it, but I am a layman, and the question is perhaps more relevant to this than to any other Clause in the Bill. It says that the trustees must do certain things, and may not do others. What happens to the trustees if they contravene the law? They could be dismissed, of course, but they could be dismissed without an Act of Parliament.
Perhaps it is now more a question of political science. Are we really passing an Act of Parliament at all, or simply laying down a sort of code of behaviour? I realise that one can hardly treat misbehaviour on the part of the trustees of the National Gallery in the same way as one treats a case of pulling the communication cord on the railways without excuse. Nevertheless, it is curious. We are going through the solemn passing of an Act of Parliament, but nothing is laid down as to what happens to people who deny the express will of Parliament. I am quite sure that it will work out all right, but I should like to know the legal explanation.

Mr. Brooke: I should certainly not like, in the absence of the Law Officers of the Crown, to say whether there are precedents, but the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) has raised a very interesting point.
As I see it, the position is this. Whether any pecuniary or other penalty would be imposed on trustees who were found to have disobeyed the provisions of this Clause I doubt whether any of us will ever discover, because, in fact, if the trustees did disobey—and wittingly disobeyed—there is no doubt whatever that the Treasury would dismiss them. They are appointed by the Treasury and can be dismissed by the Treasury. The Treasury acts on the instructions of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and of the First Lord of the Treasury, who as Members of the Government, are responsible to Parliament. I think, therefore, that the Parliamentary control is complete, but I doubt whether matters will ever get quite so far that a trustee will find himself in danger of imprisonment through any sins of omission or commission.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 5 to 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause.—(APPOINTMENT OF CHAIR MAN OF NATIONAL GALLERY TRUSTEES AND TATE GALLERY TRUSTEES.)

(1) The Treasury shall appoint a chairman of the National Gallery Trustees and a chairman of the Tate Gallery Trustees.

(2) A chairman appointed under this section shall hold office for so long as he shall remain a trustee or for such shorter period as the Treasury may determine at the time of his appointment:

Provided that a chairman may at any time resign his office as chairman whether or not he continues to be a trustee.

(3) This section shall come into effect as regards the Chairman of the National Gallery Trustees on the first occurrence of a vacancy among those trustees and similarly as regards the Tate Gallery Trustees.—[Mr. K. Robinson.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. K. Robinson: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
I referred briefly during the Second Reading debate to one of the main considerations which led to the tabling of this new Clause. When the recent Tate Gallery controversies broke upon us I was somewhat surprised to find that the chairman of the trustees—the person who was responsible for making public statements and the person who was besieged by the Press reporters—was, in fact, a civil servant. This seemed singularly inappropriate. I always imagined a senior civil servant as someone who administered anonymously, and who was cushioned from the public by a Minister of the Crown. The chairman of the trustees of the Tate Gallery is undoubtedly a public figure, but he has certainly not been cushioned from the public by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the past, the Chancellor has interposed himself between the Chairman and this House, but that is another matter.
I repeat what I said during the Second Reading debate, that I do not intend to cast any reflection whatever upon the person of the present chairman of the Tate Gallery trustees; indeed, I think that the final subsection of the proposed new Clause makes it perfectly clear that we do not desire any immediate change in this matter. I know that the chairman is a very distinguished civil servant, and I believe that he has handled these recent difficulties skilfully and properly. I am sure that he has acted at all times on his own responsibility as chairman and has interpreted the collective responsibilities of the trustees.
I am also sure that he has acted independently of the Treasury and of any Treasury pressure which might have been brought at any time. But is it not better that the chairman of the trustees shall not only be independent of the Treasury but shall manifestly appear to be independent? In general terms, I do not think that it can be said that a senior civil servant appears to be independent of the Treasury in this capacity.
I made inquiries to see how this situation arose, and I discovered that it is the practice of the trustees of both galleries to elect the chairman from among their own numbers, and they naturally select the person most likely in their opinion to be the best chairman of their meetings.


They probably take a few other considerations into account. But in my view, in this instance they made a mistake of principle, and I think that it is a mistake that the Treasury itself would not be likely to make. We know it makes mistakes, but I do not think that this is the sort of mistake which it would make.
The effect of the new Clause is to make the Treasury responsible for appointing the chairman of the trustees, as such, for both the National and the Tate Galleries. There is nothing revolutionary about a situation of this kind. The Committee knows that the Minister of Health appoints the chairmen of regional hospital boards for a period of three years. That is another very responsible honorary job, and I am quite sure that that example could be duplicated in other fields. I have not done any extensive research into this matter, but I should not be surprised to find that that was the normal procedure and that the procedure adopted by the boards of trustees in this case is the unusual one.
In general, I am averse to giving additional powers to the Treasury. I should be very much happier if some of its present powers were taken away. But I am satisfied that the change advocated by the proposed new Clause, though a small one, is thoroughly desirable, and I hope that the Government will accept it.

Mr. H. Brooke: I thought that I had a friend of the Treasury in the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson), until he turned round in the last few moments of his speech and spoilt the whole thing by saying how important it was that the Treasury should be watched.
There are two points which his speech raised. The first is the position of the present chairman of the Tate trustees, and the second is the larger question of how the chairman should be appointed. So far as the present chairman is concerned, it is a matter of chance that he happens to be a civil servant. He was not a civil servant when he was appointed a trustee, nor was he one when he was elected by his fellow trustees to be their chairman; and when the hon. Member spoke of the importance of the chairman being independent of the Treasury, I could not help wondering whether he was

contradicting the purpose of his proposed new Clause. I say that because his proposal as embodied in the Clause would establish, in one sense, a closer relationship between the Treasury and the chairman than exists at present.
My approach to the general major question which the hon. Gentleman has raised is this. It would seem, in a matter such as this, hardly wise to make a change unless one really believes that the present system is not working well. I understand that the hon. Gentleman has no criticism of the way in which the system is working, or has worked in the past, and I have no reason whatever to think that the trustees of either gallery would desire any change or that public opinion generally believes that the present system is unsatisfactory.
I am asked to consider what happens in other bodies, and I can tell the Committee that I have made some researches into that point in order to find out what does happen, especially in bodies controlling museums and galleries; and the conclusion is that I find it would be quite out of accord with the general practice for the Treasury to appoint the chairman. I believe that there is one single case which can be found, but the proposal put forward would not accord with practice, or with constitutional principles. It would be most unusual for the Treasury to appoint the chairman.
I can reinforce that statement by reminding hon. Members that there was a Royal Commission on Museums and Galleries which reported in 1930, and that Royal Commission was of opinion that no change was necessary. I do not think that the situation has altered since then, and I must say that I think there is something positive to be said for the trustees selecting their own chairman. The trustees are unpaid people, working in an honorary capacity, who get to know one another pretty well, and they get to know the contribution which each can make to the job and how much time each can give to the task; and I fancy that they build up a closer knowledge of who would be the best leader of the team than the Treasury could ever do, with all its qualities and skill.
I do ask the hon. Gentleman to accept it from me that I have considered his suggestion very carefully, but find that the existing arrangements seem to


work smoothly and that they commend themselves so strongly to the trustees of both Galleries that it would be a pity for any change to be made.

Mr. K. Robinson: The Financial Secretary has not convinced me that the present system is better than that which I advocate, but he has convinced me that the anomaly to which I have drawn attention was an accident, and not likely to recur, and, for that reason, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion and Clause.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

First Schedule.—(MUSEUMS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS FOR THE PURPOSES OF SECTIONS THREE AND FIVE OF THIS ACT.)

The Chairman: I think that the Amendments, in page 5, line 4, at end, insert:
The Belfast Museum and Art Gallery.
in line 8, at end, insert:
The National Gallery of Ireland.
and in page 5, line 17, at end, insert:
The Palace of Westminster.
go together.

Mr. H. Brooke: Sir Charles, it will be within your recollection and that of the Committee, I think, that the second of these Amendments was discussed on Friday with the first Amendment moved that day, and that it was decided that the second of these Amendments should not be further debated, although it could be moved and divided upon.

The Chairman: I was not proposing to call it.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: We were under the impression that our Amendment also was discussed then, in page 5, line 18, to leave out from "as," to the end of the Schedule, and to insert:
are regularly open to the public, and are deemed appropriate by the Trustees.
I would suggest that it would save the time of the Committee if we discussed all these Amendments, and the only other one, together. The last is in the name of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), in page 5, line 1, to leave out Schedule 1.

The Chairman: One or two of them fall.

Lieut.-Colonel H. M. Hyde: My impression was that the second of the Amendments, as my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has said, was taken at the same time as the very first Amendment on Friday, which was moved by the hon. and learned Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu).

The Chairman: I was not proposing to call it anyway. I am calling the first of these three Amendments.

Lieut.-Colonel Hyde: I beg to move, in page 5, line 4, at the end, to insert:
The Belfast Museum and Art Gallery.
Hon. Friends of mine who also represent constituencies in Northern Ireland have put their names to this Amendment. I do not want to detain the Committee for very long at this late hour, but I should briefly explain that the purpose of the Amendment is two-fold. First, it is to give the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery the benefit of Clause 3 in the sense that a gift or bequest to the nation may be allocated by the Treasury to that Gallery as well as to the others mentioned in this Schedule.
As the Bill stands, without this Amendment, a testator domiciled in Northern Ireland or connected with Northern Ireland who makes a gift or bequest to the nation cannot have his bequest allocated to the Belfast Gallery; but it can be allocated to one or another of the institutions named, the Science Museum in London, for instance, or the National Museum of Wales. The purpose of the Amendment is to allow the gift of a person connected with Northern Ireland to go whither it would seem normal for it to go—to Northern Ireland.
The second object is to enable the trustees of the Tate Gallery under Clause 5 to transfer pictures to the Belfast Gallery, which, I would observe in passing, is short of pictures. The position of the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery is unique in the United Kingdom. It was built by and is maintained by Belfast Corporation, but it has for many years, in practice, had to play the role of a national institution, or, perhaps, to be more accurate, a regional institution. The reason for that is that when Ireland was partitioned under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, Northern Ireland did not receive any proportion of the Irish


national treasures in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Consequently, the functions of the Irish National Gallery in Ulster devolved upon the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery.
11.15 p.m.
The Committee which was set up to make awards to Northern Ireland in respect of loss of cultural amenities, the Colwyn Arbitration Committee, awarded to the Government of Northern Ireland a sum of £400,000, but not a single penny of that money was spent on the purchase of works of art. At that time—1921—there were more urgent matters to which the newly-created Government had to devote their attention, and the money was spent on such projects as constabulary barracks, prisons, science laboratories, and so on.
This is an excellent little gallery. It is admirably staffed and administered and has an excellent curator, but it is very short of pictures, except pictures by Ulster artists. It is well provided with the works of such artists as Sir John Lavery, Paul Henry, Humbert Craig, William Conor and Colin Middleton, but it lacks pictures by many other artists and other schools.
We believe that the Belfast Gallery should be placed on the same footing as the National Galleries of Wales and Scotland. It may be objected that the Belfast Gallery is a municipal gallery but, as I have tried to show, it goes far beyond the functions of the normal municipal gallery, such as the Liverpool or Birmingham Municipal Gallery. It performs national, or at any rate regional, functions.
In those circumstances, I hope that the Financial Secretary will accept the Amendment. If he does, I can assure him that it will give very great satisfaction in Northern Ireland and will demonstrate that in these matters of pictures and other works of art Northern Ireland is being treated in the same way as are the other component parts of the United Kingdom.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: A short time ago the Committee divided, if only in my mind, on party lines, but on this Amendment all parties are joined in amity and understanding in order to try to write into the Schedule "The Palace of Westminster." As hon. Members

know, an advisory committee on works of art, set up by the Minister of Works, is sitting and considering what should be done to rearrange, re-hang and improve the pictures and works of art in this very fine and noble seat of government.
We are in full career, we are full of ideas, and we are hoping to go into the outside world, beyond the confines of Westminster, to the great country houses, to art collections of every sort and kind, to beg and borrow pictures and works of art to exhibit here, and we hope very much that in time there will be gathered in this magnificent Palace such a fine assembly of great pictures and works of art as will please the public which regularly comes here to view our premises.
If the Palace of Westminster were added to the Schedule, it would empower galleries—the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery—to transfer pictures to the Palace of Westminster. It can be said, and perhaps the Government will say, that these works can be sent to us by loan at any time after the passage of the Bill—and that has been said on previous occasions—but I do not think there is much here on loan at the moment. Most of the pictures here have been presented, as far as we have been able to see, by late hon. Members or by well-wishers from all over the world, and others have been purchased out of funds at the disposal of Mr. Speaker. It would be rather novel to receive pictures and works of art on loan.
I observe from the Schedule that it is not entirely confined to the great museums and galleries. There is mention of the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum houses works of art in the realm of furniture and furnishings. It cannot be said that the Science Museum houses any works of art at all, yet I imagine that the Science Museum has been included because it may be that a fine portrait of an eminent scientist should be transferred from the National Gallery or the Tate Gallery to the Science Museum, and the same with the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Can this Palace of Westminster claim anything less than that there should be transferred to us from these galleries, if they exist—and I think they do exist—the fine portraits of statesmen of our time


and of preceding times and of well-known personalities who have been Members of the House of Commons? I hope very much that the Government will be able to agree to the Amendment.
Of course, there is still the residing power that the Treasury can by Order in Council at any time, on an affirmative Resolution of both Houses, add the Palace of Westminster to the Schedule. But I do not think that such an addition would fall at such a happy time as this, because this is the inception of the Works of Art Committee. It is the time when we are trying our utmost to gain the maximum publicity for our work and when we feel that all hon. Members, on all sides, would like to endorse it in statutory form and claim it to the country as an ideal.
My hon. Friend may object to the Amendment because it incorporates "The Palace" in the Schedule and no other palaces are to receive pictures in like fashion, but we are a very special palace. We are unique, and I think that in all the circumstances we well qualify for inclusion in the Schedule.

Mr. William Teeling: I support my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) in his appeal to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary for a reason that has not yet been mentioned but which links up with our discussion the other day. You, Sir Rhys, will remember that my hon. Friend turned down the suggestion that the National Gallery of Ireland might be included in the Schedule. His reason was its being outside the Commonwealth and that many other galleries in different parts of the Commonwealth were not included.
One of my reasons for appeal the other day was that Irish people all over Ireland found considerable difficulty in getting to London to study art and to see the pictures which we have here. Therefore, as the National Gallery has been turned down, if it were possible to include the Gallery in Belfast it would at least be possible for the people of all Ireland to get there, and this would be easier for them than coming to London. For that reason, I very much support my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Belfast, North.

Mr. Nicholson: I support the eloquent plea made by the noble Lord my hon.

Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). We now have a golden opportunity to furnish this Palace with pictures of persons and scenes connected with Parliament. I think that it should be enshrined in the Bill and not left to subsequent afterthoughts by the Treasury.
I say that it is a golden opportunity, because the present set of pictures in the House is not worthy of its setting. There are pictures of former Prime Ministers and Parliamentary scenes which may not necessarily be very good works of art, although they are fine pictures in themselves, which would probably remain in the cellars at the National Gallery or the Tate Gallery. I believe that the House of Commons would be doing itself only bare justice if it included the Palace of Westminster in the Schedule.

Mr. H. Brooke: I am very much obliged for the moderation of the hon. Members who have so persuasively dealt with their Amendments.
I should like, at the outset, to remind the Committee of the precise meaning and application of the Schedule. In the Schedule we are considering which national institutions can appropriately be selected as places to which works of art can be directed or transferred "directed" when they have been given or left to the nation with no precise indication where they are to go, and "transferred" when they have become surplus to the requirements of the Tate Gallery but yet would be suitable to be owned and exhibited elsewhere.
As the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) recognised, we are in no way limiting the loan powers. Both these great institutions, if I may so term them, are within the loan powers and pictures can be lent to them as freely as to any other building or gallery.
The noble Lord made a special plea to me that we should recognise the Palace of Westminster as a very special palace, which it undoubtedly is, and that we should seek by means of the Schedule to assist those who are anxious to see it stocked with worthy pictures. That in itself is a wholly desirable aim which all of us would applaud, but I must tell the Committee that I do not think it would be right to use the Schedule for that purpose.
All the pictures with which the Schedule is concerned are pictures which have been given or bequeathed to or bought by the nation, and the donors, the testators and the purchasers have all thought of these pictures as ones for public exhibition. It is true that at various times the public can walk through this building, but it is not by any means the case that the public can go where they wish. If the relation of an hon. or right hon. Member had left a picture to the nation and his executors found that it was in Committee Room 12, other members of the family might later hesitate to leave pictures to the nation because what had happened was not what had been desired.
It is on the issue of access by the public that I am afraid that the Palace of Westminster cannot be brought in. I am very sorry indeed about it, but I do not believe that this is the way in which the Palace of Westminster can acquire its pictures. On the other hand, I hope that it will be a recipient for loans. The noble Lord, who is closely concerned with the due and appropriate furnishing of the Palace, seemed to be suggesting at one point that there was something slightly improper about pictures being here on loan. I must advise him that there are pictures here on loan at the present moment, and I am not quite certain whether all the loans have statutory cover. Consequently, I hope that the Bill will soon receive the Royal Assent in order to make sure that the loans are validated.
11.30 p.m.
To turn from the Palace of Westminster to the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) will understand when I say that no one who bears my name has ever been unsympathetic to Northern Ireland. If the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery had been a national institution in the ownership of the Government of Northern Ireland, unquestionably it would have been in the Schedule from the beginning. Unfortunately, for the purposes of the Bill, it is under the control of a committee of the Belfast Corporation. Therefore, it is no more a national institution than the art galleries of Liverpool or Birmingham. If at any time a new situation arose and the gallery

were transferred from the Belfast Corporation to the Government of Northern Ireland, we should all feel that a very strong case had been established for a Treasury order to be made under the Schedule so that it could be included. As it is definitely a municipal institution it would be wrong to include it.
I assure my hon. and gallant Friend, and all others who feel strongly about this, that the actual loss in pictures will be negligible compared with what they can get by way of loan. We all desire that the loan powers should be used freely, and particularly that the pictures now in the cellars should be exhibited in galleries where they can be enjoyed.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: We are sorry that the Financial Secretary cannot include the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. True, it is a municipal gallery at the moment, but that is no reason for excluding it. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent such a gallery being included in the Schedule. Municipal galleries are not included but some of us think they ought, and have every right to be included. If the Financial Secretary could have done it, he would have helped Northern Ireland to enjoy pictures which otherwise they may not get, and he would have broken the ice for adding other municipal galleries to the list.
I was not surprised at what he said about the Palace of Westminster. We need feel no objection to discussing an Amendment about getting pictures here when there is no room for them in the Galleries concerned. After all, everyone of us is only a bird of passage. Not one of us is here permanently. Therefore, any pictures which were brought here on loan would mean as much to others as to ourselves.
The only other regret that we have is that in some way—I know the reasons—we could not include the National Gallery of Ireland. In view of our discussion on the Lane Bequest and the great desire in all quarters of the Committee to come to terms in this matter with the people of Eire, it is a pity that we could not have made a gesture in this Schedule, acknowledging the fact that the National Gallery of Ireland does exist, and put it among the institutions which should enjoy these treasures.

Lieut.-Colonel Hyde: I readily accept the expression of sympathy which has


fallen from my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, especially as he bears the name that he does, which is of particular significance in Northern Ireland. At the same time, I cannot altogether disguise my disappointment, which I share with the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall), that it has not been possible to include the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in the Schedule to the Bill, and I know that that disappointment is also shared by my hon. Friends who represent Northern Ireland constituencies.
However, I appreciate the legal reasons why, at the moment, the Financial Secretary does not find it possible to treat the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in this way. He has made it clear—and I am grateful to him—that it is up to the Government of Northern Ireland to take the action which will be necessary to alter the present status of the Belfast Gallery. For the last 30 years that gallery has occupied really the position of the National Gallery of Northern Ireland, and I hope that the Government of Northern Ireland will take note of what has been said tonight and will at no distant time confer the necessary de jure status upon that gallery to enable it in the eyes of the world legally to occupy the position and discharge the functions which, in fact, it has done since 1921. In the circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule agreed to.

Second Schedule agreed to.

Bill reported, with an Amendment; as amended, considered.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

11.39 p.m.

Dr. Stross: This has been a very interesting discussion, and the Bill as it now stands is somewhat different from what it was. We are grateful to the Financial Secretary for having met us in our criticisms on the contentious and difficult Clause 4.
We are now happy with the Bill, and are satisfied with the way in which we have been met. Perhaps the Bill is now

better than it was because there is a little more flexibility than existed originally.
If by any chance it has been noted that we on this side of the Committee have been more conservative than most hon. Members opposite I do not think we need apologise. We have exchanged opinions across the Floor of the Chamber, and I am sure that most of us are sorry that we do not have discussions of this kind more often.

11.40 p.m.

Mr. H. Brooke: I am greatly obliged to the hon. Gentleman and the House for the way they have received this Bill and helped me to speed it on its way to the Statute Book. It has been a refreshing experience to discuss matters of great public interest without any party feeling creeping in. All of us have been free to express our opinions and genuinely desirous of producing a result which will lead to the greatest public enjoyment. I only wish to say in bidding the Bill godspeed that in these two or three days we have been arguing about machinery, but I would suggest that all of us who have been taking part in this debate, and those who have not, as soon as the Whips will permit them, should go to pay a visit to Millbank or to Trafalgar Square.
At Millbank, they will see that wonderful collection displayed in a manner which I am sure the House will agree does great credit to the trustees, the director and the staff. At the National Gallery the exhibition of pictures is not as large as it has been, and the galleries are not open to the extent that they were, but I have given an assurance that the reopening of the galleries is at least proceeding, and almost all informed opinion would agree that the hanging and display of pictures is far more beautiful and successful than ever it was when we went there as small boys.
I think we should all wish that the trustees will make good use of their powers, and that the staffs who help in looking after the pictures will find that the restrictions imposed by this Bill are not onerous, but they will be conscious that behind them and the trustees is the good will of this House.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with an Amendment.

DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF

11.43 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Draft of an Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Federal Republic of Germany) Order, 1954, a copy of which was laid before this House on 19th October, an Order may be made in the form of that Draft.
I think it would be for the convenience of the House if we discussed, at the same time, the two following Orders which stand in my name on the Order Paper.
The first two Orders are rather similar in content, the third is a comparatively minor matter. The first two Orders deal with the double taxation relief agreements which have been negotiated with Germany and Switzerland. It is within the knowledge of the House that since the war a policy of seeking to secure these double taxation agreements with other countries has been pursued. Now to the list, which includes the United States, France, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, and, within the Commonwealth and Empire, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Ceylon and many of the Colonies, will be added the countries mentioned in these Orders if we approve them tonight.
The agreements with Germany and Switzerland will provide comprehensive relief from double taxation, and while they remain in force will supersede in relation to German taxes and Swiss Federal taxes the provisions of Section 348 of the Income Tax Act, 1952, with which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) will be familiar, and which granted unilateral relief from double taxation. Under these new agreements, the cost of relief will be shared between the Governments of the contracting countries.
If it is the wish of the House, I will go into any degree of detail about the agreements, but perhaps I can best help by assuring right hon. and hon. Members that both the agreements are based upon the draft model agreement drawn up by the Fiscal Commission of the League of Nations and endorsed by the United Nations Fiscal Commission.
The third Order, that dealing with the United States, is no more than an Order to validate a protocol amending the agreement with the United States, in the sense that it will facilitate the extension of the existing agreement to Colonial Territories. It was found that the existing agreement could not be extended to Colonial Territories except as a whole. It seemed to both sides that, in its extension to certain Colonies, it would be desirable for modifications to be made. It is purely in order to do that that this Order is laid. Its purpose, I am sure, is unexceptionable, and I hope that the House will approve the measures by which it is proposed to achieve it.

11.47 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Jay: As I have no wish unduly to prolong the labours of the Financial Secretary, may I first ask whether I rightly understand that, so far as the German and Swiss Orders are concerned, they follow the standard pattern of the series of agreements which we have had since the war. If they depart from it in any important respect, perhaps the Financial Secretary could tell us what it is.
Secondly, as to the quite different Order relating to the United States, can he say whether this special position has arisen out of proposals to extend the agreement to British Colonies, or to dependent territories of the United States?

Mr. Brooke: If I may briefly reply, the two agreements with Germany and Switzerland follow the same pattern. I do not think there are any special provisions to which I should call the attention of the House.
The reason for the United States Order is that it was desired to extend the agreement to several British Colonies. Difficulties were found, in that it was quite clear that some minor modifications would be required, and both the United States and the British Governments are agreed that it is desirable that those modifications should be made so that the extension will become practicable.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Draft of an Order entitled


the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Federal Republic of Germany) Order, 1954, a copy of which was laid before this House on 19th October, an Order may be made in the form of that Draft.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Swiss Federal Council of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Draft of an Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Switzerland) Order, 1954, a copy of which was laid before this House on 19th October, an Order may be made in the form of that Draft.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the United States of America of the Protocol set out in the Schedule to the Draft of an Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (U.S.A.) Order, 1954, a copy of which was laid before this House on 19th October, an Order may be made in the form of that Draft.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

HOLBORN FARM, KINGTON

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Oakshott.]

11.50 p.m.

Mr. Archer Baldwin: I am sorry to intrude into the happy atmosphere that has prevailed in the House for the last two hours, but I have a duty to perform. I want to bring forward what I regard as an unsavoury case, which has to do with two of my constituents—a Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd. The name of the farm concerned is Holborn, and it is situated near Kington, in Herefordshire. I mention that because on the notice of the Adjournment debate the name has been wrongly spelt, owing to my bad writing.
Mr. D. J. Lloyd was the owner of this farm in 1944, when he applied to the war agricultural executive committee for the approval of a scheme to obtain water. A Mr. Sturgess, the then cultivation

officer for the committee, came out to the farm, drew up a scheme and approved the cost. The original cost was to be £290, but it was eventually increased to £370, owing to the fact that a deeper bore had to be made than was originally intended. The scheme was approved and a grant recommended of £170. Soon after this date the executive committee set up a new department called the water and drainage department, and a Mr. Young was put in charge.
The scheme to obtain water failed, and the contractor removed all his equipment. Mr. Lloyd claims that he spent £300 on this scheme. The result of this expenditure, for which he got no grant, was that he went bankrupt in 1947. Previously, he had sold the farm to an old friend of the family named Williams, who accepted him as a tenant, but after the bankruptcy Mr. Williams wanted to help the Lloyds and accepted Mrs. Lloyd as tenant of the farm. That was in 1948. The position then was that the water scheme had failed; Mr. Lloyd had failed; the farm had been sold and a new tenant had taken over.
In 1950, when Mrs. Lloyd was the tenant and Mr. Lloyd was carrying on the farming, they lost five cattle through drinking foul water. They then decided to go in for another scheme. The same contractor and the same water officer were called in. They met in the house, discussed ways and means of carrying out a new scheme, and eventually it was decided to have one. This is denied by Mr. Young and the contractor, Mr. George, who say that they did not meet Mr. Lloyd in this scheme. Someone is telling lies, of course, because Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd are prepared to swear on oath that they were all present together and that they decided what should be done. They also say that the questions of Mr. Lloyd's bankruptcy and Mrs. Lloyd's tenancy were discussed, and that Mr. Young said that no fresh scheme was necessary.
Mr. Young and Mr. George say that they did not know that Mr. Lloyd was a bankrupt, but it is astonishing that Mr. George would not start work on the scheme unless £50 was paid to him in advance. This money was borrowed from the landlord by Mrs. Lloyd, further money was borrowed from Mrs. Lloyd's mother, and a total of £222 was paid to Mr. George to complete the


second scheme. This scheme was successful, and then arose the question how much grant should be paid, and to whom. Correspondence took place with the Ministry of Agriculture's Legal Department, which maintained that the grant for the second scheme should be paid to the Official Receiver. I have in my possession correspondence which was carried on at the time between Mrs. Lloyd and the Official Receiver, and at one stage the Official Receiver denied any claim in this matter, but the Ministry of Agriculture insisted that it should be paid.
I must say that Mr. Lloyd was extremely foolish in many of the actions he took. He tried to imagine himself as being still the tenant and, instead of saying that he was acting for his wife, tried to give the impression that he was still in occupancy of the farm and that he was making claims on his own behalf. It may be that I took a hand in this when, in 1949, I wrote to the then Minister of Agriculture on his behalf and, from memory, I think that I wrote to the Herefordshire county executive asking them to expedite a scheme which had been delayed for some five years.
In October, 1953, I took up the case on behalf of Mrs. Lloyd and, in some correspondence, there is a letter from the Ministry of Agriculture, dated 22nd October; and may I here say that when my right hon. Friend who was Minister of Agriculture is asked to sign a letter, he should see that the statements contained in the letter are correct. In this letter to which I refer it is stated:
Grants are made only to landowners and to tenants acting with the approval of their landowners. So far it is not established that Mrs. Lloyd is the tenant.
I sent a certificate from the landlord to the Minister stating that Mrs. Lloyd had been the tenant since 1948, and that, in fact, the cultivation department was dealing with Mrs. Lloyd.
The second statement in that letter of 22nd October last year is:
The rating authorities have said that since February, 1948, Mr. D. T. Lloyd has been the tenant…and I am afraid this seems to destroy the grounds for Mrs. Lloyd's claim.
There never has been a D. T. Lloyd, and the agricultural executive committee could have found out who was assessed for rates merely if it had done what I did and established that Mrs. V. C. Lloyd had

been on the rate office books since February, 1948. She had paid rates by cheque. I have produced books to the Minister showing that to be so.
The third statement in that same letter is:
This is only one of many unsatisfactory features of the whole affair. On one occasion Mr. Lloyd called at the agricultural executive committee office representing that he was his brother, and that D. T. Lloyd was dead. He asked that the water supply grant should be paid to the widow, Mrs. V. C. Lloyd.
I think that action could lie there, because there was never a D. T. Lloyd, so how can it be suggested that D. J. Lloyd, the original owner and tenant, who had been dealing with the war executive committee for some eight years, could possibly go to the agricultural executive committee office and say that D. T. Lloyd was dead; and that D. T. Lloyd had been his brother? It does not make sense.
Another statement in the same letter is:
Also, the bona fides of at least one receipt is in doubt.
Lloyd did not give receipts, but received them. What is suggested? Is it that Lloyd forged the contractor's name on a receipt? If so, why was he not prosecuted? Is it suggested that he forged somebody's signature to get a grant for something for which he never paid? The matter could easily have been cleared up by the executive committee.
There is another letter from the Ministry, dated 9th April, 1954, in which it is stated:
Until very recently all our dealings have been with Mr. V. C. Lloyd, whose first application for a grant-aided scheme was made in January, 1944.
In fact, that application was signed by David John Lloyd. Yet the Minister tries to tell me in a letter of 9th April that the dealings had been with V. C. Lloyd. It shows the state the officials have got into. The result was that we could not stop the Minister paying this money over to the Official Receiver.
The next chapter is this. Mrs. Lloyd decided to go in for a scheme of reclamation of some marginal land, and applied to the A.E.C. Mr. Sturgess came out, drew up a scheme in the name of Mrs. Lloyd, showed what the grant was; and eventually Mrs. Lloyd was paid the amount. Part of the scheme was for drainage, and the drainage department was called in to deal with that small part


of the scheme. Meantime, Mr. Young had resigned or been promoted or sacked. My hon. Friend perhaps knows which it was. Therefore, a fresh officer was appointed, but still they had this black mark against Lloyd. Two officers measured up the drainage scheme, which was put before the drainage department.
Twelve months went by and nothing was done, and Lloyd asked to be allowed to call in an outside contractor. That was agreed to, and this work was done by a very prominent firm of agricultural contractors, and a debt was incurred of £100, which Mrs. Lloyd paid. When she claimed for this she was blandly told by the water department that there was no scheme in her name. In other words, the little bureaucrats in that office saw a way of doing the Lloyds down, and of doing them out of what they justly were entitled to. I understand that this department inspected the drainage scheme and agreed it was done correctly.
I wrote to my hon. Friend to ask what was the amount of grant and how much was paid over to the Official Receiver. In a letter dated 8th November it was stated that Lloyd could produce receipts —I am referring to the second water scheme—only for an amount of £221 19s. 4½d., and that one of them was of doubtful validity. It was stated:
We finally decided to pay grant on the two receipts amounting to £171 19s. 4½d., which incidentally were both in the name of Mrs. V. C. Lloyd, but obviously related to work on the scheme.
I want to stress this. The receipts on which they based their payment were given to Mrs. V. C. Lloyd. The letter said:
At the rate of 50 per cent. the grant was £85 19s. 8d. but against this had to be set the sum of £40 which Mr. D. J. Lloyd owed to the Radnorshire Agricultural Executive Committee.
The Minister said the two schemes were one. Therefore, when the grant was paid, why was the grant based on receipts for the second scheme and why did it take no account of the expenditure of something like £300 incurred for the first scheme? If the two schemes were one, why should the Ministry pay out any grant at all when the only receipts it had in its possession were receipts made out to Mrs. V. C. Lloyd? It was not entitled to pay any money at all if what it said was correct.
I shall be interested to know why the Radnorshire executive office was entitled to any of this grant. When did D. J. Lloyd incur this debt? Did the Radnorshire executive give him credit as an undischarged bankrupt or was this debt incurred before Lloyd's bankruptcy? If it were a debt incurred before the bankruptcy, why did not the Radnorshire executive office put in its claim to the official receiver and take its cut from the assets which were realised? I cannot understand why the Radnorshire executive had any right to claim a part of this grant. The total grant paid was only £85 19s. 8d., whereas if the two schemes had been added together and treated as one the amount paid would have been about £261. This should be investigated because it is a disgraceful performance.
One of the reasons I brought this case forward is to call attention to what is taking place in this old England of ours. This is not the only case. We have had Crichel Down, we have had the Pilgrim case, we had a case debated on the Adjournment last night. This is something which is occurring in all Departments—municipal, county or ministerial. We, the Conservative Party, must see that a private person who has a claim against a Ministry has the same right of having his complaint investigated and the same right of getting that to which he is entitled as any other citizen who has a claim against another citizen.
We must break down this State dictatorship. We talk glibly about Communism in Russia, but this is the sort of thing they do in Russia; the State makes up its mind about something and the individual has no claim or cannot get his claim investigated. In this case we should have been able to put both parties on the mat, put them on oath and find out who was telling lies and who was not, but as it is we have to accept what the Minister has decided.
The Conservative Party has proclaimed that it will set the people free, and it is up to us to get on with the job a little faster in future than we have done in the past. I quite agree that the Conservative Government have done a good job in getting rid of some of the controls which existed when they took office, but we must take steps, while we have the chance, to see that any dispute, whether it is between individuals or between an


individual and a State Department, can be taken to independent arbitration or a court of law. There must be no case in which a man has to commit suicide because he cannot get justice.
We want to get on with the job now, because if a Socialist Government come into power in the distant future, which heaven forbid, they are pledged to bring in more controls and more nationalisation and to set up more Departments. It is more than ever essential that we should bring in legislation to see that the ordinary citizen is not dominated by those in control.
I have been speaking rather strongly, but I feel very strongly about this matter. This woman who has been "done down" has to carry the burden of a bankrupt husband and a son who is a permanent invalid. Instead of a Department of State taking advantage of her ignorance and the man's ignorance it should have given them every assistance which it possibly could give. The tin-pot bureaucrats who make these statements should not be allowed to do so without some form of investigation, because it places the Minister, who puts his name to these documents, in a very difficult position. The ex-Minister found that to be so in the Crichel Down case. That can occur again unless some action is taken to verify statements put to the Minister for him to sign.

12.10 a.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): This is a long and involved story, starting with the original application in 1944 and finishing now with the Adjournment debate of my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin), and I cannot possibly deal with all its details in the few minutes that remain to me.
The broad facts of the case are that the original application for the water supply scheme was made by Mr. Lloyd, and at no time until 1953 was there any suggestion that this scheme was on an application of Mrs. Lloyd's. The original scheme failed in its first boring, which failed to give a satisfactory result, and after a long process, partially of repair, partially maintenance and partially adaptation, a second boring was finally tried. It proved successful and was connected

up with part of the work of the original scheme, and the pump and part of the equipment were moved over to the new borehole.
As far as the Ministry was concerned, however, it was always the same application, and Mrs. Lloyd's suggestion that she was the applicant arose only at the very end. Our problem is whether there is any sound, reliable evidence which would justify us in treating Mrs. Lloyd as being an official applicant for a second scheme at any time. The fact is that there simply is not any evidence for that.
We have the obligation that everybody has when a man is a bankrupt to pay whatever is due to him to the Official Receiver. Unless there was really sound evidence to show that a second application had been made, and that it had been made by Mrs. Lloyd, we had no alternative in the matter. We have our obligations the same as anybody else, and we have our obligations also to Mr. Lloyd's creditors, who, no doubt, have a considerable amount owing to them. But be that as it may, there certainly is no evidence, and all the facts about the tenancy, important though they may be in some ways, are not really relevant to this particular issue.
Our practice is that where application for a scheme is made, even if the tenancy alters, we continue with the original applicant, and it is for him then to make what disposition he likes with the incoming tenant. But it is the original applicant, even when he ceases to be the tenant of a holding, with whom we continue to deal as a grant-aiding Department until the scheme is completed, even when his tenancy has ceased. Therefore, all the doubts about the question of tenancy are not really relevant to the question of who was the applicant and to whom the grant was due.
We can pay out only on receipts that are obviously sound, reliable receipts that relate to the work done, whether on the first or second part of the scheme. The fact that the first boring failed does not invalidate the scheme for grant aid providing it had been approved as being a reasonable, sound boring. Therefore, when we came to pay out the grant we considered such receipts as could be put before us for work done.
Once again, it does not matter whether Mrs. Lloyd had paid the money. So long


as it related to the work which had been done, it was proper to pay it out. On the question of the £50 receipt to which my hon. Friend has referred, the facts were that it was a receipt which was dated 26th August, 1948, and the signature was written across the stamp, which was a 1951 issue.

Mr. Baldwin: What does that matter?

Mr. Nugent: How could a valid receipt have been made out in 1948 when it carried a 1951 stamp? The stamp had not been printed at the time the receipt was supposed to have been drawn up, and we had no alternative but to regard the receipt as unsound.
Reading the papers with great care, it surprised me that more receipts had not been produced, because it is quite evident that much more work had been done. One thing which I can say with absolute certainty is that these receipts simply have not been produced to us, except for part of the work which had not been approved. For a great deal of work which obviously had been approved and done we have never seen receipts at all. One of the many mysteries of the case is who paid for the work.
I want to leave my hon. Friend in no doubt at all that my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Dugdale), the former Minister, looked into this matter carefully and that I have also looked into it in detail and examined the papers. The facts of the case are quite definite. Only one application has been made. It has always been treated as Mr. Lloyd's application, and there was no suggestion until 1953 that it was ever Mrs. Lloyd's application.
In the circumstances we had no alternative. We could not possibly look around and say that, because Mrs. Lloyd said that she treated part of it as a second application, it was one, unless we had sound evidence to that effect. Therefore, all the other material which my hon. Friend brought in was not relevant to that issue.
The drainage application was treated in the ordinary way. As I told my hon. Friend, the reason why it did not qualify for grant after the work had been done was that when the work was inspected it was found to be radically different from the work that had been approved. Consequently, the inspecting officers had no

alternative but to disapprove it. There was no question of discrimination. Any other applicant would have been treated in exactly the same way.
Some of the comments my hon. Friend has made about the case and the handling of it have been grossly unfair to the county committee and my Department. There simply is not the evidence to show that these people have been wrongly treated. I think they have been quite fairly treated.
I certainly admire and respect my hon. Friend's sympathy and energy in taking up his constituent's case, but I cannot altogether say I admire his judgment in the views he has expressed about it. The matter has been fairly and properly dealt with. It has been a long-winded affair, but from the Department's point of view there has been nothing which could possibly bear the accusations which he has made about it.
I hope he will bear in mind that annually some 7,000 water supply schemes, amounting to nearly £2,000,000, and some 30,000 field drainage schemes, costing nearly £4,000,000, are dealt with. Considering the huge volume of business that goes through perfectly smoothly without such severe criticism as my hon. Friend has poured upon me, I feel that his remarks are totally unjustified and I considerably resent them.

Mr. Baldwin: I am not criticising the county agricultural executive committee. I am criticising one little department which is presided over by a little tin-pot bureaucrat. I did not like bringing the case forward, because many members of the executive committee are my personal friends and I have always had good service from its officers. I begged that the matter should be settled at county level, but because I could not get it so settled I have had to raise the case here tonight.

Mr. Robert Crouch: Surely my hon. Friend's local officers must have known that Mr. Lloyd was bankrupt. It seems to me that they failed in their duty to inform the Minister that Mr. Lloyd had gone bankrupt. They must have known that Mrs. Lloyd was the tenant of the farm. Has any inquiry been made of the local people about Mr. Lloyd going bankrupt?

Mr. Nugent: I have already explained that it did not matter whether the tenancy


of the farm had changed or not. Nor did it matter from the point of view of the application that Mr. Lloyd had gone bankrupt. It was quite in order for the application to continue in his name although he had gone bankrupt. In due course, if the scheme had been completed, he would have been entitled to have the grant paid. That was what was done. We knew that he had gone bankrupt. We had correspondence with the Official Receiver. My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster knows the letter which Mrs. Lloyd sent on which the Official Receiver replied to her and that her facts were substantially incorrect.
The point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Crouch)

is totally irrelevant to the issue. There was in no way a disqualification because Mr. Lloyd had become bankrupt, nor was there because of the changed tenancy.
The main basis of the complaint is completely misconceived. The applicant was clearly Mr. Lloyd at the beginning and Mr. Lloyd at the end, and it was on his application that we paid whatever we could on receipts related to the work.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'Clock on Wednesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Twenty Minutes past Twelve o'Clock.